Chapter 20: Tongue Twisters
THE RH KANE BUILDING
It is the dispiriting duty of this humble narrative to inform that Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown did not go for Round Four upon returning to Cassandra's apartment. They had a margarita apiece, brushed their teeth, and went to bed, each wearing their undies and a t-shirt (or, in Stephanie's case, Cass' old gym shorts).
Cassandra awoke the following dreary morning with a headache from the previous evening's fight (a first for her in many years) and an empty bed.
There was, however, a note on the nightstand next to Cassandra's queen-sized bed.
She practically had to swim to the other side of her king-sized bed to get to it. She reached out for it with her bandaged left hand while she wiped the sleep-boogers out of her eyes with her right. She opened the note and read it while on her stomach above her thick black comforter.
I didn't ditch.
I'll see you later.
There's just something I have to do today.
And it was signed with a lip print, done in purple lipstick.
No.
Not purple.
Eggplant.
This had to have been the lipstick Stephanie got from Walgreens the night before. Cassandra had to wonder just what the hell kind of extra a person had to be to buy an entire tube of lipstick just to sign a note with their lips. There had to come a point where one had to think "Eh, screw it, I'll just use the same pen I wrote the letter with."
Then Cassandra had to wonder about the place at which she bought it. If it carried the precise shade that Stephanie needed, then the Founders Island Walgreens on Puckett Street must be the best stocked Walgreens on planet Earth. At least as far as their cosmetics aisle went.
Cassandra managed a grin, before she felt the morning breath in her mouth, and dropped her face into the pillow.
It was the pillow that Stephanie had slept on the night before.
Cassandra didn't mean to breathe in Stephanie's scent once she was down there… But once she was down there, she had to talk herself out of doing it any further.
BURNSIDE CEMETERY
Stephanie caught a cab on the curb in front of the RH Kane Building as Cassandra slept.
The first stop was at the hotel to change into a set of clothes that fit her. And some actual underwear, by God. Gym shorts worked, but there was still the feeling of going commando under two layers instead of just the one. It was its own brand of icky.
Once in her own clothes yet again, she got back in the cab (the cabbie kept the meter running), and she made her way to her second stop.
The Burnside Cemetery.
Much like flies and their inexorable yearning for cowshit, hipsters were drawn to Burnside. Rare in urban covens for the too-too-trendy across the United States, the gentrification of Burnside was not the result of the eviction and pricing out of minorities and the poor. Some forty years before, the Burnside section of mainland Gotham City (located near the offramp to the bridge leading to Bleake Island) was a large golf course whose owner defaulted on his loans. Hello, foreclosure. A consortium of Bleake Island factory owners-most notable among them Sionis Steel-bought the land cheap, erected apartment buildings, and heavily promoted this new cheap lodging to their workers. After all, some of that money they were paying them could wind up back in their pockets through rent.
Was this legal? No. But then again, this was Gotham City, and no one was going to check.
Recessions are a motherfucker, though, ain't they? One of those hit before the apartment buildings were due to open. Hello, downsizing. And the consortium of Bleake Island factory owners no longer had a big enough worker base to get a return on investment, thus multiplying their economic woes. The factories went under, the apartment buildings stood empty, and for fifteen years, it was a question of who actually owned them.
In came Wayne Enterprises, who spruced them up and opened them with the intent of providing low-cost housing to the people who needed it the most. The problem here being, Burnside was situated right next to the rough-and-tumble mob section of Tricorner, and the people who would have ideally benefited from this housing refused to uproot and move. Yeah, the East End was a shithole, but at least it was relatively safe.
However these cheap apartments served as a clarion call for that special breed of citizen that lacked both self-awareness and the instinct for self-preservation.
Enter The Hipster.
Bring me your tired, your fashionably poor, your trust-fund novelists, your experimental performance artists, your post-post-post-modern cubist painters, your white girls with the one long and matted and turd-looking dreadlock hanging off the back of their heads, yearning to be chic. All the microbreweries and bicycle stores of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, with none of the white guilt. God bless America. And Mommy and Daddy's checking account.
Stephanie lazily gazed through the back window as the cab pulled up to the base of Burnside Cemetery. It was three sections separated by two gleaming white gravel pathways. And today, like a majority of the days Stephanie had been in Gotham this stretch, the landscape was covered in a medium film of fog.
"Keep the meter running," Stephanie said.
"You're putting my kids through college," the cabbie said. "You know that, right?"
Burnside Cemetery was well-maintained and expansive. As she made her way up, white gravel crunched beneath her sneakers.
She got her phone out and ran a search on the cemetery's website. Lot E-21 was where she needed to go.
Stephanie found the tail end of Row E and walked past five headstones on her way to E-21.
The final resting place of Crystal Jennifer Brown.
Stephanie stared down at her mother's simple white headstone, and tried to empty herself of all conscious emotion, trying to let whatever she thought she needed to feel seep in.
Nothing came.
Once upon a time, Stephanie Brown cultivated a dark and knotty resentment for her mother. Her dad had routinely beat and humiliated Stephanie from a young age, and Crystal had done nothing to stop it. Oftentimes, it seemed to young Stephanie that Crystal entered the line for her own abuse at the hands of Arthur Brown with the same glazed placidity that cows had in slaughterhouses.
But it seemed to Stephanie that time had mellowed her.
Not everyone was born with the spark in them to jump in front of the bullet. To leap off of the building. To fire the grapnel gun. To protect the innocent from harm. If that were the case, there'd be more superheroes in the world than civilians.
Stephanie, upon getting that Google Alert about Crystal's death at the hands of a stroke years ago, tried to kindle that resentment yet again, but it just… didn't happen.
The fact of the matter was if she were to blame her mother for failing to shield an innocent from harm, then she'd have to blame everyone else too. And she just didn't have it in her. The world was just too human for that.
In the act of surveying her feelings, which seemed to shift in and out of focus, Stephanie heard footsteps treading upon the white gravel behind her.
She sighed, closed her eyes, and got herself ready to lightly chide Cassandra for following her here.
Stephanie turned around to see not Cassandra, but Selina Wayne advancing on her through the fog. There in black slacks and a black turtleneck beneath a black overcoat, the most striking bit of her being the fake gray streaks in her long, loose, black hair
"Hey," said Stephanie.
"Hey," said Selina. "I thought you'd make it here eventually. It gave me an excuse to drive around the city."
Stephanie nodded, and turned back to the gravestone. And Selina walked up to Stephanie, putting her arm around the shoulder of her black pea coat.
"She got clean," Selina said. "In the end, I mean."
Stephanie blinked, not looking at her. "She did?"
"Yeah," Selina said. "Offered her a job at Kyle Security, with substance abuse programs and psychological therapy included in the benefits package. No one in this city was going to offer Crystal a job after her estranged husband blew up almost seventy-thousand people."
"Thank you," Stephanie said.
"She moved out here to Burnside," Selina said. "It's why she's buried here. She took up painting."
Stephanie furrowed her brow. "Painting?"
Selina nodded. "Landscapes, mostly. They weren't very good, but it seemed to make her happy. You didn't know your mom was into painting?"
Stephanie shook her head. She hadn't known her mother to so much as draw a stick figure, let alone attempt something as relatively ambitious as a landscape.
This knowledge engendered a kind of strange weightlessness within Stephanie's body. She had somehow missed complexity. She was unaware of another's rich interior life.
But then again… Stephanie was one to talk. In more ways than one.
She took the silence to ponder the possibility that Stephanie and Crystal Brown, mother and daughter, had to separate to become who they'd needed to be. And Stephanie felt compelled to weigh whether or not that was a victorious thing, or a tragic one.
It turned out, in the end, it was just a thing, with no tendrils of morality or fate to weigh it down. It was just something that happened. Editorialization from the universe was neither present nor required.
Standing there at her mother's grave, Stephanie Brown… acknowledged… her mother.
It wasn't forgiveness. That would be a long time coming, if it ever came at all.
But acknowledgement?
Yeah.
She could do that. A simple nod of the head in recognition of the fact that they both shared the same world at the same time, and tried to get through the endurance trial of life itself the best they could.
"I'm ready to go," Stephanie said.
"Nothing to say?" Selina asked.
Stephanie sighed yet again.
"I remember," Stephanie said, "when I was about twelve or so, she told me 'Steph, I may not be the smartest, I may not be the wisest, but one thing I'll never fail you on, the one thing I'm best at, the one thing I'll never steer you wrong about… is my advice on boys.'"
Silence followed.
Then, like cracks of sunlight breaching a thick cloud, a snort of laughter escaped Selina Wayne.
"I'm sorry," Selina said, her face cracking.
"It's alright," Stephanie said. "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't think it was funny."
"It's a graveyard, though."
"And?"
Selina quickly padded along the grass to the white gravel, a seeming sanctuary for her giggle-fit.
Stephanie followed.
Then they began their long amble down the gravel path to Selina's car and Stephanie's cab.
"How's Bruce?" Stephanie asked.
"Right now," Selina said, "he's down at the Crime Alley clinic, pressing Talia for info about the Arkham Knight. Other than that, he's in a wrestling match with his own stoicism. The patented Bruce Wayne form of grief. You mind telling me what the hell happened to your face?"
Stephanie felt no need to go into specifics about that subject other than "I got into a fight."
At which Selina simply smiled. "Welcome back to Gotham."
They both regarded the Gotham City skyline: a craggy collection of pointy buildings wedged firmly in the ass-crack of a near-impenetrable slate gray sky.
"This place missed you," Selina said.
"I highly doubt that."
"It's true," said Selina. "You leave Gotham City to its own devices for too long, it gets all serious. It needs someone who came from nothing to blow a raspberry or two. Call bullshit when needed. Otherwise, it's just rich people hocking loogies at other rich people. No flavor and no texture."
"You sure I'm the one you're talking about?" Stephanie asked. "I seem to remember a cat burglar from not too long ago."
"I fucking hate cat puns," Selina said, "but I'm an indoor kitty now. I'm… Old."
"Not that old."
"Which is still old enough," Selina said. "I've gone establishment. You wanna know the truly awful thing?"
"What's that?"
Selina stopped walking. "I actually like it."
Which was enough of a revelation for Stephanie to stop walking herself.
"We're bunkering up," Selina said. "Everyone at Wayne Manor. Jason, Cass, Tim, Violet…"
"Ugh."
"...even Harper and Babs. Come with me."
"I can't," Stephanie said. "I have a couple of-"
"No you don't," Selina said. "I paid off your cabbie. Wanna tear around the city in a Mercedes with your old boss?"
"You… you paid off my cabbie?"
Selina nodded.
Stephanie's brow lowered the more the gravity of the situation fell on her. "That's… That's really dangerous. You could have been anyone."
"I know, right?"
"I was putting that asshole's kids through college…"
THE THOMAS WAYNE MEMORIAL CLINIC
Bruce Wayne pulled his pickup truck to the curb outside of the Crime Alley clinic, fed the meter, and went inside.
He saw Doctor Jenkins sitting behind the main desk on what was apparently a slow day. She was filling out the Gotham Gazette crossword puzzle. In ink, no less.
He gave her a nod of the head. "Doctor Jenkins."
"Mister Wayne," she said in reply.
Bruce took a right and walked down the hall to the rear care ward.
Talia al Ghul, sitting in a blue plastic chair in jeans and a white button-up, was holding the hand of her husband, the Black Manta, David Hyde… whose soulless brown eyes were open in the midst of his otherwise bandaged face.
Bruce stopped and stood by the doorway. Talia looked at him, and then looked back at David.
And David's hand raised, slow and wobbly, and beckoned Bruce toward him.
Bruce slowly walked the few paces to the bedside.
"Manta," Bruce said, keeping his voice flat.
David's voice came out in a low hiss, most likely due to heavy sedation.
"So… you're the one… who kicked our asses… all those years."
Bruce simply nodded.
"If The Joker…" David said, "were still alive… he'd die… all over again."
Bruce didn't say anything.
"You keep… Aaliyah… safe."
"She's surrounded by people who will give their lives in a second to protect the innocent," said Bruce.
"Good," David said. "Now… Get outta my face… Makes me sick… just looking at you."
"The feeling's mutual," said Bruce.
Talia put her arm on David's bare shoulder, and said "Rest, Beloved. Rest."
Bruce noticed the deep well in her silky voice. She called someone "Beloved," and it was not him. And while there was no force on this Earth that could pull him from Selina Wayne, it still felt odd to hear it. Like when he was a child, and he had to get used to the new teeth that grew in.
"I know you wish to see me," Talia said. "May we do this in the hallway, please?"
Bruce nodded. He stepped back to allow Talia to go ahead of him. Ladies first, after all.
Once they were out in the hallway, they leaned against the walls on opposite sides, and just locked eyes. Each studying how old the other had gotten.
Talia spoke first.
"The beard is a nice touch."
Bruce stayed silent.
"Have you have any regrets?"
"No," Bruce said immediately.
"Nor I."
Then more silence. And for a second time, Talia took it upon herself to speak.
"Do you wish me to extend my condolences?" she asked. "Do you wish me to tell you how sorry I am that Dick Grayson is dead? I am not."
Bruce tilted his head and glared.
"Every person you surround yourself with dilutes you. You have festooned your inner sanctum with your inferiors, and shed tears when they fall. You have lessened yourself. Your stubborn insistence upon relying on others who would hold you back is alien to me. I am not sad Dick Grayson is dead at all."
Bruce fought off the instant urge to tell Talia that he hadn't shed a tear since Dick died. But there was no way that that would sound good to anyone he knew who would listen, Talia included.
But Bruce had to marvel at the steely, unblinking way with which Talia had said this. Motherhood hadn't made her a better person. It just took her out of the game. She was still the same monster that would still hold a small, dark place in his heart, ready to put an entire city of nine million people at risk just to win him back.
She hadn't changed.
Bruce, in lieu of saying anything, reached into the pocket of his blue blazer and handed her his phone.
"Press the screen to start the footage."
"I know how a phone works, Bruce."
She pressed the screen, and watched the soundless footage of the Arkham Knight at the Gotham Royal. First killing Dick Grayson, and then savagely beating her husband within an inch of his life.
Talia watched it all without so much as blinking before the footage ended, and she handed the phone back to him.
"He seems impressive," Talia said.
"She."
"She?"
"She's calling herself 'The Arkham Knight,'" Bruce said. "And she's in league with your father. Ra's is in town, he's behind all this. He wants to kill your daughter, and then marry my daughter to provide him that heir he's always wanted. And yesterday, Dick's body was stolen from the morgue. Heaven only knows what Ra's wants with it. Talia, if you have any…"
Bruce stopped himself when he saw that Talia had gone rigid, her eyes wide.
"Talia?"
"The Arkham Knight," she said. "My God… Has it been so long?"
ARKHAM ASYLUM
Arkham Asylum has its own morgue.
And upon the slab where hundreds of inmates had been autopsied over the long and violent decades, there rested a green sleeping bag and a small white pillow with no case.
Into the morgue walked a woman in her early twenties, wearing a blue cotton bodysuit that clung to her. It was the bottom-most layer for a suit of high-tech armor.
This was the Soldier-in-Blue.
This was the Arkham Knight.
The bodysuit hung to a tall and formidable wall of hard muscle, which had been the result of a literal lifetime of training. This bodysuit covered the host of scar tissue all over her body.
But it did not cover her head, and there were a multitude around the circumference of her shaved skull. A couple on her cheeks, a few decorating her scalp, two long ones in the back extending from the occipital bulge on down to the neck.
The centerpiece, however, was the bright pink flatness where, on another person, a left ear would have been.
For when Ra's al Ghul asked her if he had her love, she said he had it with all of her heart.
When Ra's al Ghul asked her if he had her loyalty, she said he had it with every fiber of her being.
And when Ra's al Ghul asked for her ear as proof of said love and said loyalty, she gave it happily. She did not cry out when she took the straight razor to it. She did not even blink.
The Arkham Knight sat upon the metal slab, reached into the sleeping bag, and pulled out a phone, which was connected to an overhead projector that she had installed. She thumbed through a few files, before eventually setting on the one she wanted.
The image that was projected on the morgue's white wall, an instant frozen in time, was that of a man with green hair, a ghastly white face, and lips the color of blood. He was in a straightjacket, and he was looking up and to his left.
The Arkham Knight sighed. She ran a thick, calloused hand over the top of her head, feeling the blonde stubble on her palm.
And then she pressed Play on her phone.
The image came alive, and the brightly colored fellow in the straightjacket whipped his head around, looking in amusement.
A female voice with a Scandinavian accent came in over the speakers The Arkham Knight had hooked up.
"This is Doctor Ingrid Karlsson… First patient interview… with The Joker."
THE THOMAS WAYNE MEMORIAL CLINIC
"I seem to remember when Bane broke your back," Talia said. "You were out for a while."
"What about it?" asked Bruce.
"Father had no faith in you," Talia said. "He did not think you would recover. I only had eyes for you, and it seemed the heir he longed for so would be a great time in the offing. If it ever came from you at all."
Talia folded her arms and took her former position of leaning against the hallway wall.
"This, of course, came on the heels of the failure of one of his little projects. The One-Who-Is-All that was to have been provided for him by David Cain. The perfect killing machine."
"My daughter," Bruce said with a deep and forbidding tone, letting Talia know to put some respect on Cassandra's name, should it fly out of her mouth.
"The very same," Talia said. "The venture was a bust. No matter the years of assurances David gave that little Cassandra would return to him, she never did. It seems father was out a luminary. So he did what all immortals do. He waited."
"Waited for what?"
"For an opportunity to present itself," said Talia. "That opportunity came when you recovered from your little mishap with Bane, and donned the cowl yet again."
"How was that his opportunity?" Bruce asked.
"The first night you appeared once you had healed," Talia said, "was when you quelled a riot at Arkham Asylum."
ARKHAM ASYLUM
On the old interview tape that the Arkham Knight watched, The Joker was singing.
"'Why are we here? What's life all about? Is God really real? Or is there some doubt? Well tonight, we're going to sort it all out. For tonight, it's…'"
The offscreen Doctor Ingrid Karlsson finished for him.
"The meaning of life," Karlsson said.
"Does there have to be meaning?" The Joker asked. "If there's a point to all of this, then I can miss it. And my rap sheet tells you how proud I am of my aim."
"It's nice to have a framework for your actions," Karlsson said. "Not just yours, but anyone's. There doesn't have to a blanket meaning for all people. It can be a meaning we can apply for ourselves. It gives our lives' work context."
"Context is for kings," said The Joker. "That is what Socrates said… Or was it Star Trek? I can never remember." "I wish to know your context,"
The Joker let off a high, perverted giggle.
"Do you, now?" he asked. "You really wanna start digging? I have to tell ya, Doc. Great minds have brushed against me, and broke. I convinced someone who once sat in that chair to open his wrists with his own teeth. In fact, I can devote some of the highlights of my romantic life to do-gooder doctors who stuck their noses where they didn't belong and got caught in the whirlwind. So tell me straight, Doc... Why do you really want in?"
"Well," Karlsson said, "can you keep a secret?"
The Joker's green eyes lit up. "Ooooooh! Secret time! Oh, I love those! Doctor Arkham didn't try to tell you not to tell me anything about yourself? Those who fall in get stuck, you know."
"He did," Karlsson said. "But every once in a while, one has to live dangerously."
"I agree wholeheartedly," The Joker said. "Except for the 'every once in a while' part. So c'mon, Doc! Tell ol' Mister J why you want to pick his brain."
The Joker leaned in, one ear facing the offscreen Doctor Karlsson, apparently so he could get all of it.
And Doctor Ingrid Karlsson said:
"I want to help you."
The Joker looked at her with eyes wide, before he started laughing. It was so loud that it blew out some of the audio on the camera upon which this interview had been recorded.
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," The Joker said. "It's been a while since someone pulled a prank like that on me. You go on the Wall of Fame."
"It's no prank."
"Sure," The Joker said. "Keep it going. You'll be Andy Kaufman-tier in no time."
"Is it so hard to believe?"
"Yes," The Joker said, the joviality in his voice disappearing, only to be replaced with cold cruelty. "Now you're just pretending to be stupid. I hate that. No one puts on the doctor's ID in this place without trawling for interview material in hopes of getting a book deal. I'm a bestseller mine that's actually claimed lives. But here you are, putting on the Fake Nice Girl Act, hoping I'll open up. C'mon, Doc, what are you gonna call the book? Don't tell me you don't have any titles rattling around in that noggin of yours."
"I do not want to write a book," Karlsson said.
"You seriously expect me to believe that?"
"If you knew how many research papers I had to write at Aarhus University, you would know that I am in no way inclined to write a book."
"Really?" The Joker asked. "You don't want to go on The View and talk about your book? You don't want to meet Meghan McCain?"
"I cannot tell you how averse I am to the concept of meeting Meghan McCain."
"Why not?" The Joker asked. "I do. She could feed SO MANY PEOPLE!"
"Is my desire to help you without hopes for personal gain truly the most impossible thing you have come across in your lifetime?"
"No," The Joker said. "That would be the time I saw The Penguin in the shower when me and some of my guys broke into the Iceberg without him knowing it. Say Doc, when The Penguin pees, do you think he needs a system of pulleys to lift his gut so he doesn't splash all over himself?"
"Wow," Karlson said, apparently taking the matter seriously. "I don't know. I suppose-"
The Joker cut her off. "'Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.'"
Without missing a beat, Doctor Karlsson said "'For Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be.'"
This visibly caught The Joker off-guard. His green eyes went wide, and the ever-present smile on his face vanished. He leaned in with a curious expression.
"'Now Kissel will whistle at busty Miss Russell, who'll rustle and bustle till Kissel will roar…'"
Karlsson finished for him. "'So Russell asked Axel for Kissel's dismissal, and this'll teach Kissel to whistle no more.'"
It was as though The Joker discovered a new species. His green eyes almost glowed with an internal fire.
"'Tito and Tato were tattooed in total, but Toto was only tattooed on his toe…'"
For a third time, Doctor Ingrid Karlsson finished. "'So Tato told Tito where Toto was tattooed, but Tito said Toto's tattoo wouldn't show.'"
The Joker sat there gobsmacked, his mouth hanging open, before he began to laugh. But this time it was veined with genuine amusement, it pulsated with honest warmth.
And if one could hear a higher counterpoint to this laughter, almost in harmony, then one would would have heard Doctor Ingrid Karlsson laughing right along with him.
At the end of his laughter, The Joker said "I have to say, Doc: It sure is a rare thing to meet a fellow Danny Kaye fan out in the wild."
The Arkham Knight smiled at this when she turned the interview off.
THE THOMAS WAYNE MEMORIAL CLINIC
"I remember that riot," said Bruce. "A doctor on staff died that night. Doctor Ingrid Karlsson."
"You just remember such things?"
"She was killed by a Batarang," Bruce said. "How do you propose I forget it? An idiot security guard picked it up as a souvenir while I was dealing with The Victim Syndicate, only to throw it at four supervillains who'd made it out of their cells. It missed all of them, and hit an innocent woman after she had just given birth."
"And that newly birthed little girl," Talia said, "was of great interest to my father."
"Why?"
"I've told you," Talia said with a grin that mixed both mischief and nostalgia. "The Cain experiment failed, but the idea was a sound one. Create a soldier from the moment of their birth, give them the skill, and they will carry your agenda into the future. The problem father had with David Cain was that his method of teaching provided no ideology. Cassandra Cain was a weapon, not a believer. But here was a child that would believe everything my father told her in his pursuit to destroy you… Or bring you to our side. Her mother did, after all, die by one of your objects."
"And that's all it would take?" Bruce asked. "Her mother got hit by a stray Batarang, so Batman must be the bad guy?"
"It is a little more complicated than that," Talia said. "We were able to procure security footage from Arkham Asylum. Every bit as authentic as it is woefully misleading. I must hypothesize that, to this very day, Astrid Arkham believes you murdered her mother."
Bruce felt his blood run cold.
"Astrid Arkham? That's her name?"
"Oh yes," said Talia. "You knew who her mother was, but you did not ask who was the father? We ran the tests. It was Jeremiah Arkham. The head of the asylum. The last scion of an old Gotham City family who did not wish to be disinherited by his elderly mother for siring a child out of wedlock with an employee like Doctor Ingrid Karlsson. He seemingly had no trouble letting his illegitimate newborn daughter go into the foster system. Doctor Karlsson was from Denmark, by the way. We picked a suitably Scandinavian name for the child. Astrid just... stuck."
Talia folded her arms, and walked into the middle of the hall.
"A week after that riot," Talia said, "you embarked, with the rest of the costumed detritus that infests this city, on a mad quest to liberate it from the clutches of Bane."
"The Great Gotham Team-Up," Bruce said. "That's what they call it, anyway."
"And you remember, Bruce: Neither my father and I were in attendance for that event."
"Let me guess…"
"We were liberating the then-eight-day-old Astrid Arkham from her city-provided shelter."
"Did you kill the people who were looking after her?"
Talia rolled her eyes. "Please, Bruce. We are not savages. We bought the child fairly, and without bloodshed."
Bruce felt his stomach sour at those words.
"It was a foundation built upon a lie," Talia said, "but my father built it nonetheless."
"Why?" Bruce asked. "There are easier ways to train soldiers than this convoluted… whatever this is."
Talia saighed. "It is as I said. Father had no faith in you. You rose after Bane broke you, you put on the cowl again. But even in a best case scenario, even if you came to me with open arms and helped me bring forth a son that would lead the League of Assassins into a new age, there would still be elements that would attempt to keep such an event from coming to pass."
"Elements?" Bruce asked. "What do you mean?"
"Open your eyes, Bruce. The people whom you have surrounded yourself with! If you came to me, to father, to the League of Assassins, do you seriously think that Alfred Pennyworth would have let you go? Dick Grayson? Jason Todd? Barbara Gordon? Selina Kyle? That is why father needed to train Astrid from her first conscious thought. To… ease your transition. One way or another."
"You mean kill them." Bruce's inflection did not make this sound like a question.
Talia settled her gaze upon him. "If there was nothing keeping you in Gotham City, then there would have been nothing keeping you from us. You have embedded yourself with people who love you. You have also surrounded yourself with people who have talent. Need I point to the endless battery of warriors and soldiers that you and your insane simulacrum of a family have beaten into hospital beds over the decades? The task at hand required a single soldier with specialized training. And evidently resources, if the past few days have been anything to go by. She has advanced technology and an army at her back."
Bruce closed his eyes, and tried to bring this craziness into a kind of focus. It was… difficult.
"Astrid Arkham would have been one year old by the time The Joker died, and I took my hiatus," Bruce said. "She would have been four by the time The Undying hit Gotham and Batman came back. She'd be twenty-one now. Your father has been playing a long game."
"Time," Talia said, "is the one thing the great Ra's al Ghul cannot seem to get rid of. It has been sixteen years since I have spoken to my father, but even when I was in his good graces, I was not privy to most of the information around Astrid's training. If we were to enter the realm of theory yet again, then I must theorize that with me out of the picture, and no sure way for an heir, he would have liquidated that four-year-old Astrid and dropped her into a shallow grave."
"What do you think stopped him?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Talia asked. "He heard that the deadly and talented Cassandra Cain had made herself known after years in the wilderness, and affixed herself to the side of The Batman. Thus, he found another way to secure the al Ghul heir. So he kept training Astrid, and he waited. Only now, it was Cassandra's separation from Gotham City that he needed to secure, not yours. Which means, as far as danger goes, Cassandra doesn't seem to be in much of it. She's too valuable. You, on the other hand… I do not think Astrid Arkham likes you at all."
Talia stepped toward Bruce, arms folded, her green eyes sizing him up.
"The Arkham Knight," she said, "was built from the ground up to murder the children that you have been using as human shields these past thirty years."
She held up the index finger on her right hand, and the corner of her mouth listed off in a sneer.
"One down…"
ARKHAM ASYLUM
Astrid Arkham had many interview tapes such as these. Her mother, the late Doctor Ingrid Karlsson, ministering to the needs of Gotham City's so-called Rogues.
She always felt a great pride in this. In seeing the woman from whom she sprang forth attempting bring light to lost causes. Helping those in need.
And her heart always broke when she saw the state that some of these Rogues had been in.
Black eyes. Casts. Hastily stitched cuts. Lumpy and swollen noses. Missing teeth. It seemed that to gain entry into this River Styx, the ferryman took from them his toll in blood and pain.
Batman…
The false idol. The symbol without whom Gotham City itself seemed content to wither and die. Which made Gotham City beyond salvation, and deserving of its eventual fate at the hands of the great Ra's al Ghul.
And she ended these looks into the minds of Gotham's former supposed monsters the same way she always did.
She brought up the menu on the phone, and brought up another tape.
This was not an interview. This was surveillance footage of a rec room within the walls of this very asylum.
From the vantage above, The Joker, Clayface, Two-Face, and Scarecrow were surrounding a very pregnant Doctor Ingrid Karlsson, and helping her bring Astrid Arkham into the world that Ra's al Ghul had intended her to help shape.
They all looked at something… or some one… that was out of frame.
Before a small black object, easily revealed to be a Batarang upon further analysis, whipped into the frame and ended the life of Doctor Ingrid Karlsson.
The woman who had only tried to help.
Everyone in this footage was dead now. The Joker had been murdered by an insane lover. Jonathan Crane had been shot and buried in a construction site by an unknown assailant. Harvey Dent and Basil Karlo had been set on fire from within by the green flame of The Undying.
And… of course… Batman murdered Astrid Arkham's mother.
Bootfalls from the tile floor outside the morgue. Astrid turned off the surveillance tape, got off of the slab, and stood at attention.
Ra's al Ghul entered. Black trousers and a white shirt. He seemed to have stowed his jacket and his cloak in his quarters elsewhere in Arkham Asylum.
"Greetings, child."
"How was Brazil?" Astrid asked. Her voice was high. Almost breathy. An observer both inattentive and deeply imaginative would suggest that an asthmatic thirteen-year-old girl was using the body of this apparent female bodybuilder as a ventriloquist's dummy.
"The fruits of my labor should be in Gotham City within forty-eight hours," Ra's said. "And how fares your mission? Spreading discord and chaos among Bruce Wayne's pathetic family unit?"
Astrid's pale blue eyes met those of The Demon, and she smiled.
"Something… interesting… has come up."
"Do tell," said Ra's.
"On the night that I… disassembled… Mother Panic, I received a transmission from an unknown party. A 'Mystery Caller.'"
Ra's' eyes narrowed. "What did they ask of you?"
"They asked nothing of me," Astrid said. "They volunteered information. The whereabouts of Dick Grayson for the following day, and the make and model of his vehicle. It was from this information that I was able to locate him… subdue him… and destroy him."
"And who might this Mystery Caller be, in your estimation?"
"Someone on the inside," Astrid said.
Ra's al Ghul raised his eyes. Astrid smiled.
"Bruce Wayne has a mole problem," Astrid said.
"Has it occurred to you that this may be a trap?"
"It isn't."
"How can you be sure?"
"It can't be," Astrid said. "Dick Grayson is dead. By my hand. None of those people would have thought that any trap would have been worth the death of one of their own. They will not make sacrifices like that. Not unless someone turned coat."
She saw a fire light in Ra's al Ghul's green eyes. He was seeing sense. Astrid Arkham smiled even wider.
"And," she said, "that Mystery Caller gave me the information for today's op."
Ra's nodded. "Fascinating."
Astrid stood up straighter, and felt pride well within her.
"It seems that someone in Bruce Wayne's family hates him almost as much as I do."