I know ends don't justify the means in your holy book...
I did not hear Dick shouting behind me as I raced up the dirt tunnel. I did not hear my own voice screaming her name. I did not hear my guns cocking. I did not hear my own heart throbbing in my chest.
But please…
My eardrums rang like a broken stereo, static in my spine as I stepped over ninjas foolish enough to touch an electrified door. They twitched as I passed them, and bolted in the direction of the tank, only to find the main hall flooded with people and violence. The countdown was synced with my helmet, and when the ringing stopped, the ticking replaced it.
Please God, don't let my family die today.
In the heart of the dark, I looked for the sun to shine. I found the yellow sun at the top of the waves of people, rolling with fists thrown and blocked. The gun turret was out of rounds, her hands wrapped around a rifle instead and I shouted her name, but couldn't hear my own voice.
I'm beggin' you. I just found them again…
Even if I couldn't hear it, she did. She ducked beneath the shield of the turret and looked at me. She dove for me as soon as the word 'out' left my mouth, rifle under her arm. I tucked and rolled with her, then as soon as my zipkick was in hand, I aimed for the yellow hub on Robin's chest. He leaned back to support the grip as we zoomed towards him. He ducked us behind a barricade they made from three metal desks they'd overturned from the lobby of City Hall. As the timer hit zero, the Hellbat armor dove in front of us, spreading the black triple-titanium wings.
And...they've only just forgiven me for what I've done.
Fire burst from the tank and roared in all directions. I clutched Gail to my chest, held onto her like the last chance and cursed under my breath. I felt her gloved hand slip into mine, and squeeze tight. I caught Dick's eye over her head and his smile, teeth whiter among the filth on his face.
I know I'm just a real angry guy with a lot of guns and too much nerve and not enough patience and no faith in your justice…
When the initial blast was over, we - like soldiers in the great wars - emerged from our hiding place to attest to the casualties. And that's what we were for this city. Soldiers. We, who loved this place.
But...Let this be the only time you listen to me. I've prayed to you before and I didn't get shit, but I'm...I need this. I really need this right now.
When the sound of motors came over the crackling of what was left of my once-beautiful tank, I heard Gail reload the rifle.
You didn't give me death, you didn't give me better parents, you didn't give me jack shit , but right here, right now-
We didn't even think. I took the empty mags out of my handguns, Dick twirled his escrima sticks, and Tim extended his staff. Selina produced a bolo and whirled it around. Batwoman merely clenched her already blood-soaked fists.
I glanced over at Gail. I saw the determination in her eyes, that boundless determination that spat at risk and kept me gasping.
I'm telling you that while I don't deserve saving, they do. And I'm in love...
Alfred walked over to the hunk of tank still smoking, the jagged metal warped like a flower in bloom, and lifted it. A creaking that made my heart sink sounded from the Missus' carcass, and I frowned. Dick patted my shoulder.
"Miss Starfire?"
A whoosh and her flaming silhouette came into the sun by him. Alfred asked her, as if simply imposing upon her to get the mail, "Throw it at the new wave, if you please."
"Certainly." And she took it from him.
"Be easy with her," I said. "She's been through enough already." As Kori switched grips to throw, I turned my back. "I can't watch."
"Oh, will you stop?" Tim rolled his eyes. "It's just a tank. You shouldn't have it anyways."
"Just a tank?" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Can't even look at you right now."
"Anytime you want to stop being a drama king, Jason," Gail said. "We have incoming."
And Batwoman, who hadn't said much the entire time I'd known her, said to Gail, "You'd think he'd be more focused on killing Falcone."
"You'd think."
I shook my head, and I heard the distant boom of my girl going up in flames. Yeah, it was just a tank. But she was my tank. She ran like a dream and if I ever find the old man's twerp of a son, I'll shove that sword up his ass for this. I teetered as I stood, high on violence and bloodlust.
The comms line came in, and Barbara gave us the siren song, "Nightwing and Company, you've got backup. Gordon and about forty cops are almost there."
"Anybody ever tell you you're wonderful?" Tim asked through the earpiece, and I saw Dick stir to my right.
"Occasionally. Oracle out."
Dick rolled his shoulders. "Let's move out, people."
We were five feet out of the ruined City Hall when we saw the black line of Falcone trucks. Starfire hovered just above us, hair blazing against the blue sky. I heard the sirens as they echoed to us across the city. Gordon wasn't more than ten blocks out.
Her hand slipped into mine for a moment, just to squeeze and let me know she was nearby, before she reached for her gun.
If they die and my city goes to hell, I'm going to blow my brains out.
And then I'll be coming for you.
…
The Batman had not been alone since he left Gotham as a young man to tour the world, and one thing he never anticipated was the silence. Alfred left with no more than a hand on his shoulder as a goodbye, like a father telling his son that he would be back after the work was done.
Before, when he was at work himself, Alfred would come in and give him a piece of news, a meal, a scrap of sarcasm that made him fight a smile. He usually had machines all around him to fill the empty spaces, ran tests a thousand times just to keep the room buzzing. Anything was better than quiet, because that was the sound of an empty mansion that his great-grandfather built by hand. Now, he was alone, and even the sound of the waves crashing against the shore was far too faint to be of any comfort.
He walked in from outside, his eyes raw. He could count on one hand the number of times he had cried so hard: the loss of his parents, the loss of his second partner - his son Jason who had been murdered by his greatest enemy, and then when the woman he loved died. This was a different kind of loss.
Say what you will about alter egos, and the necrosis they perform on the original psyche, but Batman had saved Bruce Wayne's life. The past six months had been a master's class in denial, denying that Joker had ever gotten inside him. Denying that Joker had been in control, that Bruce had lost his own body to the man who murdered his son, his love, crippled a valued friend, and destroyed a thousand other lives. Denying that it had ever affected his ability to stop Scarecrow, though he knew it had. Denying that he had ever gotten close to crossing the line. Denying that Joker's death was an accident.
The wall was crumbling, and it threatened to bury him alive. Alfred leaving had been the wake-up call he needed, and dreaded. A doting parent telling his son to grow up, and let go of foolish fantasies of nobility and knighthoods. To stop playing games with his life, and the people that needed him.
Bruce scrubbed at his face, his eyes stinging. He collapsed into the couch, his eyes raising skyward. He reached out for the remote, the silence deafening him. He needed noise, distraction.
The news station that he had wired for Gotham came on, and Bruce's heart stopped in his chest. His boys made the news again.
The running coverage at the bottom of the screen read, Gotham vigilantes race to scene to stop renegade criminals from attacking City Hall...So far, Nightwing, Robin, Batwoman, and reformed criminal Catwoman are in the fight, the roof of Hall has come down…
Selina's words came back to Bruce. Or did you think you'd reformed me?
Unknown metal bat has flown in to enter the fray...Starfire of the Titans...and the tank seen a month before is being driven by Red Hood and an unknown accomplice…
"Jason…"
Bruce didn't realize he was kneeling in front of the TV screen until his hand reached out to them. His kids. The boys he raised, the butler who raised him, the love his life fighting by their side, the cousin he mentored, and he knew that the girl he dove off a building to save six months ago was in the shadows, doing what she could. The footage switched to a helicopter shot of the fighting, and Red Hood had his back to his accomplice, a young woman with blonde hair and blood ran from her lip as she fired into the crowd. Starfire flew past the camera, and hurled Nightwing at an oncoming truck, the high peak of his laughter picked up by the camera's microphone.
He rose to his feet, backing away until his shoulder blades struck the bathroom door. He entered, and found the mirror across the empty space. There was Alfred's shaving cream and a straight razor on the counter. The butler had told him once that shaving was something he picked up in the British military, and Bruce had kept himself clean-shaven as well, fighting a very different war.
He glanced at himself, and cracked his aching shoulders. He scratched at his beard, and then his fingers met the cold steel of the razor.
…..
When the police arrived, the final push had begun. They formed a circle of squad cars around the fight, and dove into the fray with the best of us. The vigilantes of Gotham, the best officers the city had to offer, fighting side by side. Gordon, pushing fifty, punching the lights out of thugs half his age. Aaron Cash, firing into Falcone thugs with his hook curled around the barrel.
The junction that led to City Hall, burning and breaking behind us, congested with people halfway between medium rare with blood and al dente, baked under the sun. The sweat in my hair sent the blood from a cut at my forehead in a river down the side of my face, and my ribs, legs, and lower back were throbbing with fatigue and old injuries. All of my ammunition was depleted, the leg stores and extra emergency ammo gone.
Despite how exhausted I was, I didn't have much choice but to fight with the spikes on my gauntlets and my fists. Hand-to-hand. The last time I was this exhausted was when I fled Arkham with Deathstroke, escaped from my genesis. Somehow, I had the same feeling of hollowness. Like if I closed my eyes, I could wake up and it'd be over.
But I couldn't close my eyes with Gail wheezing behind me. She still had ammunition, but was saving it, her guns in her holsters. The sunlight exploded off the sword she'd plucked off a dead assassin as she ran it through mafia foot soldiers. I smirked at her. Didn't need to reload a blade.
I smashed a diving thug's face into a signpost, and as more charged, Gail brought the sword down on the spray cap of a fire hydrant. The water blasted into the crowd, and I grinned. I grew up in this city, and I remembered playing in fire hydrant water against cop warnings as a kid. I dove into the fray with a whoop, the sting of the spray at my calves.
Even with that small reprieve, I caught the glare from a squad car hood and past it, the shine of something terrible. From the rubble inside City Hall came a figure caked in dirt, but the metallic glint from the arm was unmistakeable. And then I saw Gail bolt straight for him, shouting his name with the air she didn't have and couldn't keep.
"CARMINE!"
Even with my muscles screaming, I tore off after her, and slid across the hood of the car as her blade came down on his metal sleeve. Falcone was cloaked in filth; he must have scraped away from the underground after Nightwing knocked him out. Sparks flew as the edge of the sword met the sleeve again, and I could see my training coming out as she parried his strikes again and again. She set up a high block as I jabbed Falcone in the liver, and she rolled over my back. I ducked under her to nail the muscles under his sleeved arm.
We didn't even have to think, or check with each other. She knew what I was going to do, and I knew how she'd react, compensate, and attack again. We had the same mind, we fought with it.
Then I heard Dick screaming, and I took my eyes off Carmine for the split second needed to see a man twice his size with a claw gauntlet digging into my brother's stomach. A green flash hit the man in the face, but before I could see Starfire burn him where he stood, a knee slammed into my gut. I doubled over, before I was kicked aside and the wind knocked out of me. The force had me skid across the ground, the back of my neck whipped back over the bumper of a squad car and red greased across my vision.
I tasted blood in my mouth. I'd bitten my tongue. I heard Gail grunting, the clang of metal on metal. The smell of burning dirt. The smell of burning hair.
I pushed myself up with the bumper, and staggered towards them. I drew my arm back and stuck my gauntlet to his armor, the spikes piercing his sleeve. He growled through his teeth, spit flying onto my face, "You son of a bitch!"
"Accurate," I said, and stepped back as Gail chopped the blade into the soft flesh of Falcone's shoulder joint. He was screeching, crying in his pain as I forced him to the ground. There was someone shouting in the distance, sounded like a cop, the word 'freeze', but I disengaged the gauntlet, leaving it in Falcone.
I stood and faced Gordon, my arms wide. My eyes trained on him, his gun pointed at my forehead. "You let her finish it. Then we let you have him, not before."
He bled from his top lip, red staining his graying moustache. "Should've known you'd go back on your word."
I heard each strike of Gail's stolen sword, heard Falcone's cries get weaker and weaker behind me. I felt each spray of blood with every swing hit my jacket. Every noise of frustration as she hacked the mafia boss behind me. I could see the horror on Gordon's face, his eyes wide, and he called to her, but the way I stared him down advised against it.
Once, a spit of blood hit my glove. My eyes on Gordon, his on me, I bent my arm and sniffed the smear. The new penny smell tarnished. He was minutes away from death.
"You weren't going to let me finish it if I handed him to you on a silver plate," I reminded him, "So now she will. She deserves to. He killed her mom, Jim. Tore her family apart." Gordon's mouth fell open. "I won't let her turn into me...He nearly killed six children. He nearly fried Gail and me in a metal box, made life hell for both of us. If she wouldn't do it...any one of your men would."
Gordon was no fool, and he didn't bluff, either. He stepped towards me, until the end of his gun, still hot from firing, was almost touching my right eyebrow. "You're making a monster...she's becoming a monster."
"No...she's putting one down."
"Abigail!" Jim cried over my shoulder. "Abigail, stop! Christ's sake, please stop!"
Gail was still chopping, and it sounded like she was slicing sludge. The crowd still groaned and screamed behind Jim, the fight raged on. Nobody had their eyes on us. It was just us. Gordon. Me. Gail. Her voice rang through me like a death bell tolling, and it didn't sound like her, but it held all of her clarity.
"Don't take this away from me!"
Without fear, without care, I turned my face away from the gun and my eyes widened. Falcone from the hips up was utterly decimated, his torso and head an unrecognizable mass of blood and flesh. His foot twitched, and Gail spun on her heel, her sword slicing through the ankle and sticking into the road. She tried to yank it back out, but couldn't. She let it go, heaved air. Her face was spattered with more blood than freckles, her chest and arms up to her elbows drenched in blood already drying in the sun. Falcone's body stank as the light baked his flesh.
Gail stared down at her gloves, the fingers cloaked in murderer's blood, and burst into tears. But she didn't run to me. She ran to Gordon, her arms around him and after a moment of surprise, he hugged her back. Her eyes closed, and I knew she wouldn't look at me. I knew she didn't want to.
The fights were dying down, and while my stomach knotted, I started running to them. Dick was gone, and I vaguely heard Catwoman's comms as I passed, Starfire saying that he was at the Clocktower. I was running to Tim, my hand pressed to my stitched sides. He was curled in a ball in the middle of the street, his mask half gone. He was snivelling, his face streaked with tears and blood.
"Robin," Old habits died hard, even at a time like this. I reached for his shoulder, "Let me see, man, let me see-...Shit."
His hand was gone, a bleeding stump he was attempting to stem with his remaining digits. I glared around, and saw Batwoman, sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. The cops were wounded too, three or four lay bleeding or immobile. I knew the ones unscathed would soon be collecting us. I had to move fast.
My eyes caught the black shape of a Falcone truck. I helped Tim to his feet - well, more like yanked to a standing position and half-dragged instead of assisted walking. I took a fistfull of his cape and ripped a patch off, wrapped it around the stump as we went.
"Come on, Tim," I told him as he cried, and through all the bravado, how many times he was a royal pain in my ass, I remembered that he was younger than me. He's the age I was when I was broken. My replacement. "Come on, man. I got you."
I had him lean against the side of the truck as I broke the driver's side window with my elbow, and unlocked the doors. I helped him climb the step and he laid out in the back. "Make room. I'm going back for more."
I stepped up into the cab for a second, broke the plastic under the wheel and hot-wired the truck. I turned the air conditioner on and then shut the door behind me to go back for more wounded. Being a chop shop orphan as a kid comes in handy.
I tried to scan the skies for Alfred in the black armor, but he must be back at the Clocktower, helping Barbara with Dick. I jogged back to Batwoman, my head pounding with heat exhaustion. I sighed shakily at her height. She was taller than I was, and three-quarters my weight. I wrapped an arm of hers over my shoulders, and used my wobbly legs to lift the rest of her up. Her toes dragged as I hauled her back to the truck, and Tim took her by the cape and tugged her into the back bench seat. She was mumbling in her sleep about someone named 'Maggie', apologizing in half-whispers. Tim and I exchanged a tired look over her.
I knew I wanted to go back one more time. I knew I had to see if she was okay, but as I rounded the truck, she was already coming. Her hair was streaked pink with Falcone's blood, and she saw me. She had to stop running halfway over, her cheeks flushed with asthma.
Our eyes met for a brief moment, before she moved past me to ride shotgun.
The police were collecting statements, and victims. I knew Jim would only let us pass this one time. We had just saved the city, he wasn't going to arrest us for doing his job.
I got in the driver's seat, and backed out. "Let's go home."
….
Dick had four major lacerations into his midsection, and if the man had lasted another two seconds, he would have been disemboweled completely. If it weren't for Starfire's speed and Barbara's cool head, I would have lost him today.
Somewhere in the chaos, it was decided that word needed to get to a dead thing called the Justice League about what happened today. About what was coming. Talia and the League had gotten away, and there was something out there waiting for us. Bruce had a son out there. I had a nightmare out there. Gail had a future out there.
Starfire was the only one of us fast enough for the trip, and as much as she wanted to watch over Dick, she knew she was the one for the job. She asked me to look after my brother, even though she knew she didn't need to.
Gail was upstairs with Barbara, assisting her and Alfred in helping Tim.
Dick had a breathing mask over his nose and mouth, his body white as snow, his hair inky black, and his torso heavily bandaged. I peeled off my armor piece by piece, just as he had when I was shot, until I was just in my armored pants. In my ankle pouch was my burner phone, the only place I kept one.
Behind it was the business card Clark gave me at the memorial gala. I called the number at the bottom.
"Daily Planet, Lois Lane speaking." She sounded just like she did on TV. Bright. Optimistic.
"Hi, I'm a friend of Clark's…" I said, my voice quiet as I was sure of what I was doing. "Well. Actually, I'm a friend of Bruce's."
A short silence on the other end. "The Bruce Wayne that owns this newspaper?"
Present tense. She knew about Bruce's death. Unlike Clark to keep it from here, anyway.
"Yeah...I'm Jason. Y'know…"
"The one that torched half of Gotham back on Halloween?"
I sighed. "...Yes. Clark said I could use this line to call in a favor."
"...Smallville thought you might call," Lois didn't sound surprised. "He's actually been talking about you. He's worried. What do you need?"
"A friend of mine," It seemed so trivial, to call her just a friend. "...I need her to leave Gotham, but I want her taken care of. I want to ensure that she'll be safe. I'm putting her on your radar because your boy toy is, well, Superman."
"I noticed," Lois said, and I could hear the smile. "...Has she ever been to Metropolis?"
"Not that I know of."
"Does she know what a maple donut looks like?"
"What?" I squinted, my eyes on the joints between the tiles on the floor.
"Relax, hot shot...Can you send me her digital resume in the next ten minutes?"
I glanced around, and found one of the computers Barbara had in every room of this Clocktower. "Yes."
"Name?"
"Abigail Byron."
