"When angels fall with broken wings
I can't give up, I can't give in
When all is lost and daylight ends
I'll carry you and we will live forever, forever"
Breaking Benjamin, "Angels Fall"
After I returned to the family, I made a list of people to kill.
These were people I should have killed them sooner, but my pride and revenge was apparently too good to give up for the sake of having someplace I belonged. These were evil people. The kind of people who would burn down elementary schools for kicks. They helped me become Arkham Knight, and part of my penance to this city...would be their deaths. The mandate, the mission...was whenever someone on my list crossed my path...I dropped everything and ended them, no matter what.
Tonight, I was in luck...someone on my list was working for Falcone. And I needed a word.
The vents in my tactical hood were taking in the salty smell of Gotham Bay through the hole in the shattered window. The manager's office of the Falcone shipping yard in Old Gotham was drenched in moonlight now and light from the office lamp that stood by the filing cabinet. But I couldn't sightsee. I had a ten minute window before the guards downstairs would come check on this poor fool.
Marty Nash's gray suit was already torn at the shoulders from where I'd grabbed him, and already bleeding from his forehead from where I'd smashed his hooked nose against his desk. He's nearly tripped over his chair as he backed up, eyes wide and his hands up. He demanded of me, his voice sounding like it was being strangled out of him,
"How about you drop the guns and we put a dollar amount on the information you want, huh?"
"How about no." I advanced on him in a second and nailed his forehead again with a headbutt, the manager falling to the ground in a heap. Guy's lucky that was all I did. "How about you tell me what I wanna know before I ruin this nice suit of yours with guts? Sound good? Great." I pressed the muzzle of my gun against his cheek, and held the ripped collar of his button-down with my other hand. "Where is Carmine Falcone?"
Nash's eyes bulged and he struggled in my hands. I lifted him to his feet by his collar and pinned him to the wall of his office. My patience was thinning, so I decided to play with my prey. I dropped my voice low into that deadly place, "You better start talking, or I'm gonna demonstrate how you tear a guy's spine in half and pierce his heart all at once." I roared in his face, "Where is he?!"
"I just run his businesses, freak!" He yelled, "He keeps me on a need-to-know."
I hate it when they try to play coy with me. "Bullshit. You were the man who contracted with the Broker and Scarecrow to perfect fear toxin on behalf of the Don. You practically handed Crane Ace Chemicals on a silver platter. He would never do that if he didn't trust you." I enunciated each word, putting the fear of God in this clown. "Don't. Lie. To. Me."
"T-t-travelling," The man squeaked, sweat running down his face."He's traveling. I don't know where he is, 'xactly."
"Where did he go?" I reached to the back of my belt and pulled out a short throwing knife. His eyes found it and he was struggling even harder, my grip tightening on him. I quirked a grin. "Easy, hey- easy. Relax, pal. I'm not gonna stab you. This is for the note I'm leavin'."
I dipped two fingers into my inner breast pocket for the folded note and stuck it to the wall. "See?"
"He…" He was having a hard time breathing, and I loosened my grip so he could get air in to talk. Wasn't gonna be an asshole. "He asked me to send a package to Belle Reeve for the calendar psycho."
"He's bringing him to Gotham?" My stomach was twisting. One more thing to worry about.
"Looks like it," Nash said, blood running into his eyebrows. "You and your friends are going to have a war on your hands...and I'll be more than happy to watch."
"You won't be there," My hand went to my belt again, and I quipped, "Remember when I said I wasn't gonna stab ya?"
I drew a longer, serrated knife and saw the fear fill the place in his eyes where his arrogance fled. I grinned under the hood, and laughed.
"I lied...I'm gonna stab you. Just wasn't gonna stab you with that knife."
"Boss? Boss, are you in there?" The bigger thug asked merely three minutes later, knocking on the door and exchanging a look with his friend next to him. He had a bad feeling about this; Mr. Nash was always talkative when they came up to check on him.
They held their semi-automatics at the ready and the first thug kicked open the door, breaking the hinges. But upon seeing inside, the smaller guy was holding bile back in his throat.
Marty Nash was sitting in a pool of blood that had waterfalled down his chest from a knife that protruded from the center. His mouth was slack-jawed and his eyes glassy. There was a thin cut over his right eyebrow, and a gash over his nose where it appeared like it was bashed in. One of the men noticed the note stuck to the wall with a throwing knife, and stepped around the blood, fighting intense nausea. When he couldn't get it free from the wall, the built thug lended a hand and with a few yanks using both of his arms, the note fluttered in the blood. The paper stained the little guy's hand when he picked it up, but the letters were dark enough to read through the blood.
Don't get comfortable. This was fun at first, but playtime's over. Every week that Carmine Falcone continues to walk the earth, I torch a business with his last name in the title. None of the employees will be harmed, but the money in your wallets will be. And I know that's all you really care about. Hard to get weapons when there's nothing in your pockets, isn't it?
Things are going to change real quick. This city will be free of your corruption, and I'll be the one who does it.
One more thing, dickbag: if you hurt ANYONE trying to get to me, I'm coming for you.
MEANWHILE - GRAND AVENUE
Abigail Byron remembered how Pauli's Diner ran before the first Scarecrow attack months ago. There was never more than a couple of empty seats, and people from all walks of life would come in to share a meal, talk and reminisce. It was a favorite meeting place of cops coming off the night shift, stopping by to get a stack of pancakes that the diner was somewhat famous for.
The place had been rebuilt out of pocket by the owner, Pauli Moore. Abigail didn't know him well, but from the few words she had exchanged with the man, he was proud and he knew how important it was to Gothamites to have a place like Pauli's. A place where service came with a smile. And no matter how bad the attack was, people came back. They understood that this was something that wasn't their fault. Sure, she thought, there was the occasional loud kid who cried and screamed no matter what the parents did, and the scrappy guy at the bar who never had enough for his tab. But a constant was Pauli and his woman Julia, the blonde lady behind the bar.
"Burning the midnight oil?" Pauli's gravelly voice with a thick Jersey accent made her look away from the window, and she smiled at him as he refilled her coffee for the fourth time. His eyes scanned the several papers she had splayed out like playing cards before her. "Gotham U?"
"Graduate programs, yeah," She replied, placing her hand around her cup and letting the warmth heat her cold fingers. "Nearly finished editing my thesis."
"Good on you, kid. Stayin' in school and all," Pauli said, leaning with a tattooed elbow on the back of the seat across from her. "Need some brighter heads in this place…" He glanced back at the TV over the bar, where the attack on Santa Prisca was still being covered by GNN. "Since Batman died and the new guy took over...Red somethin' or other...I don't know if he's even a good guy."
He is, Abigail almost said, like a reflex...she didn't know why she didn't. Her heart sank, her thumb tracing the curve of the cup's handle like it was the 'J' on the Red Hood's cheek. It was as warm...He was a hero to many, yes...but he had done so much wrong, too. But he was not a good guy the way you'd talk about Superman…
He was a killer who'd talked a young boy out of suicide. A tactician that knew how to let go of the rules. A young man who had spent most of his life inflicting harm, yet when his deepest secrets were strung up like Christmas lights was more concerned with the interrogator's breathing. A scarred soldier that touched like he wouldn't get another chance to save someone. A boy...calling out for his father in his sleep after he was hurt.
But she sipped her coffee, her gaze pensive as she stared into the black liquid in her cup. She saw a darkened version of her reflection, tinted red by the neon sign outside her window. Black and red, is that all this city is? Ash and blood and lead and nightmares.
She frowned, resting the cup on the saucer again. Letting out a sigh, she gathered her papers into a single stack. Abigail fished out her wallet from the back pocket of her jeans. "I think that'll be it for me tonight."
Pauli turned around, but once he saw the twenty she was holding out for him, he waved a hand. "On the house, darlin'. Promise me something?"
Abigail's eyebrows came together in confusion, but she nodded anyway, slowly returning her money in her wallet. She slid out of the booth, throwing a clip on the stack of papers and pushing them into her tote bag, shielding Pauli's view from the gun that was also tucked in there. When she looked to him, he spoke in a voice like the one her mother used when she made Abigail promise never to become a cop.
"When you become somebody, girl," Pauli shook his head, grinning. "Remember the good people left in Gotham. And anybody who says otherwise, give 'em hell."
Abigail beamed at him, determination straightening her spine and standing her taller. "I will." She moved past him, saying over her shoulder, "Take care, Pauli."
Her walk to the parking garage where she parked her Subaru was relatively uneventful. Granted, she kept a hand on her gun and watched the shadows for any kind of movement, checking frequently behind her. But that was standard in Gotham for any smart woman.
She flipped through the keys for her private study room at Gotham U, her apartment keys...looking for her car keys. "C'mon, c'mon...where are you?"
She had the door unlocked in a moment, but she did not get into her car.
Two arms came around her shoulders, a gasp escaping her lips, and the arms were crushing her to a hard chest. She felt something sharp press against her knife and a hand clamp over her mouth. Her scream was cut off in her lips, her body shoved against the hood of her car. She tried to jerk her head backwards in hopes of connecting with a chin or a nose, maybe. But the man holding her was much stronger than her, and larger.
But she managed to get her teeth around his fingers and bit down hard, the man behind her giving a howl. She gathered all the air she could into her asthmatic lungs and screamed as loud as she possibly could, her abs tightening with the effort, her eyes squeezing shut- a sharp crack rattled her as a bloody fist collided with her cheekbone, silencing her with a pained whine. The knife came against her skin harder and Abigail felt a bit of wetness slick to her throat. A rough 'shut it!' was said into her ear, and his hands snaked down her shoulders, over her chest that began to hyperventilate with terror-
"Get away from her, now!"
Abigail's heart made a wild leap as she heard the roar from her left, pounding footsteps and a gun being cocked. The next second, the man at her back was gone and so was the knife. She gasped, clawing at her neck and seeing the red streaks on her fingers, she applied pressure to the cut under her jaw and spun around to see where her assailant was. She had her gun in her hand now.
Her guess had been right; the Red Hood was grappling with the man in the black ski mask, who must have been twice his size. She was desperately trying to get her breath back, to steady the hand on her gun, to get the four men her vision blurred to turn back into just two.
When her vision cleared, Red Hood had both hands behind the man's head and powered it into his armored knee with a shout. Abigail saw the rage now, she saw every nerve that made him like she did in that elevator days ago. The man who'd attacked her was quite obviously beaten and wanting to flee, but Hood put him on his feet. Only to knock him down once more. A punch to the cheek, a steel - toed kick to the gut, a gun handle drilled into the skull again and again like a heartbeat.
Her gun fell out of her hand as she almost toppled over, her side hitting the metal of her car and she leant against it for support, nausea and shock clouding her head and dizzying her.
But it was the loud bang of a gunshot that startled her to her senses with a wheeze and her fingers scrambled to open her car door. She crawled into the back of her Subaru, hurriedly shutting the door behind her and covering her ears against the repeated gunfire. She knew the doors were unlocked, but she didn't care. Her lungs labored to receive a steady breath, and she was hearing much more than the handguns of a man who had just saved her life for a second time. She was hearing her mother, crying and holding a small child. She was hearing her mother, telling her to hide and cover her ears. Do not listen, but watch if you must. Watch. And do nothing. Be quiet. Or you will be found.
Abigail had not cried like this in some time. Not under stress like this again. Abigail Byron was not Abigail Byron now. She was who she was before she became the philosophy major who saved the Red Hood.
She climbed over the seats to get behind the wheel. She glanced over to see if J- if he was alright, and she saw him standing ten feet away from her window. She didn't dare look at the man who lay dead at his feet.
He was standing sideways, the gray leather on his forearms coated in blood and his hood down, his tactical mask shining in the garage light. His shoulders shook with his own haggard breathing, and Abigail wondered detachedly if he scared himself with what came so easy for him. With killing. He faced her completely, like he awaited judgment at her hands. His hands clenched and unclenched, and slowly, one came up to tap the back of his mask. The front lift away from his face and she saw Jason. He had beautiful ice-blue eyes, tufts of sweat-drenched black hair in his face...and the brand stood out bright white against his flushed skin.
The two held this gaze for a long time. Then, as if involuntarily he stepped closer and she jumped so bad, her hip banged the crank for the window. A look of pain flashed across his face, and he mouthed "I'm sorry". He bit his lip as she started the car with fumbling fingers and tears glittering on her face, drove away.
He watched as her car disappeared around the corner, before he sucked in a breath and roared in frustration and pain, his voice echoing off the walls.