Out of all the penitentiaries that Anthony "Fats" Zucco could have wound up in, Gotham State was a walk in the park. Everyone knew the terrors of Arkham Asylum or the rough non-meta, murderer filled Blackgate. For him and thanks to the mob boss he once served, He was riding it easy, ten years into his twenty-year sentence and eligible for parole in two for being a model prisoner. You could accomplish anything with enough money for the Maroni family.

'I mean, it could be much worse,' he thought to himself as he shaved his face with the contraband razor the guard on a Maroni payroll smuggled in. Though it was much harder to run business and he only had a small slice of what was once his former empire in Gotham, he still had a bit of money coming in and thus power.

'If it wasn't for that damn bat,' He muttered. They would never have been it on him the death of those circus freaks flinging themselves around on the trapeze. They would have died one day anyhow. 'Damn freaks.'

It was out of the corner of his eye that he saw the lights in the cell hallway dim and the sound of the other prisoners becoming muffled, like being heard through a burlap sack. It should have been much louder after evening chow, but the sound was weird and distorted.

'What da fuck,' he thought as he rinsed off the blade and patted his face down with the towel.

Turning himself so he could fully look at the opening of the cell, everything seemed dark, more forbidding than usual in this prison. Moving slowly, he stuck his head out of the open cell door as they had not yet closed for the evening and saw the gangway was empty. There was an unsettling darkness pooling in each corner and the fluorescent light in front of his cell was struggling to even admit light.

"Guard! What the hell is goin' on?" he yelled out in his thick Italian accent, but no guard came running like they should have. His voice sounded like it did not even travel far. Tony growled in anger and was about to step out of the cell into the hallway and find that damn guard Jones when his years of instinct kicked. There was something out there.

Peering cautiously both ways, he did not see anything, just that growing darkness and then he noticed it. It was about a yard or two away, but he definitely saw them. Two sharp red eyes glowing in the dark peering directly at him.

"What da fuck?" he said leaning forward trying to get a better look.

A second set of eyes opened, and he heard a deep feminine laughter gently bounce off the walls.

'Da FUCK!' his mind screamed as he threw himself back into his cell. Maroni warned him about this in the old days, but he thought the old man was joking.

Tony remembered the exact words. "If you see four eyes ever, you get the hell out of there and don't look back. No one else is gonna make it."

Fats Zucco knew there was a magical underworld that nobody spoke of, and he had seen a few weird things that people claimed was magic but nothing like this. Not a demon.

The sound of its nails scraping against the wall sent shivers of terror through him as he back up and tried to find a place to hide behind the bunk. He bumped into rustling cloth and heard the voice.

"Hello, Tony."

It was soft, dark, rich, but terrifying beyond anything he could have ever imagined. He spun in stark terror, the blood running from his face as he saw the four red eyes peering out from a deep blue hood. The monster had somehow gotten into his cell without him seeing it.

He stared at it terrified falling back against the far wall trying to put as much distance between him and it. It swayed a bit moving forward. He caught a glimpse of some sort of belt with gems on it that matched the clasp holding it around its shoulders.

"What…what do you want?"

"It is time for your penance, Tony."

"What da fuck are you talking abou-" He did not get the last words out of his mouth as a very slim, pale gray hand lashed out and affixed itself to his throat. Oh, God it was so strong. He gargled as he tried to breath, and it forced him to his knees.

"Don't use language like that in front of me. I'm offended."

"Sorry," he barely croaked out before it released him, and the hand disappeared back into the cloak. There was no face in that hood, just four glittering red eyes and a glimpse of sparkling, razor sharp teeth.

"Good," it said in a way he knew was not good…at all.

"What…what are you here for?"

"You."

His heart trilled in terror. The thumping was so loud that he could barely hear his own breathing.

"Wha….why?"

"You sit here, in your cell, still comfortable but inconvenienced for stealing the lives of two people, to destroying the life of a child. You think twenty years is enough to balance out your sin?"

"I…I had a lot of people killed. I don't know what you're talking about." Why the hell was he saying this? Was he that terrified? Hell yeah, he was terrified.

"Yes, but that will haunt you later. I'm here to haunt you now. To pay. I just need you to remember two names."

"Names?"

The creature leaned forward and the sent of chamomile was strong. His mistress loved that tea.

"John and Mary Grayson."

'Grayson?!'

The circus freaks. The ones that died because that old carnival manager wouldn't pay for protection. These two nobodies brought a demon to his cell. How was that even possible?

"I don't understand."

"I have a special…bond…with that family and I understand the hurt you have caused. I'm here to pass it to you."

Before Tony could even comprehend what was going on, that thin hand reached out and grabbed the back of his hair and wrenched his head back. Its face was straight in his own and all he saw were eyes, teeth, and then its screech.

The emotions that poured into him ripped through him. Pain, anguish, a deep hatred, and failure he had never felt before. It felt that this creature was pouring it directly into his soul. When it let up, he gasped, tears flowing freely down his face.

"Oh, god…stop."

"No," it said with a smirk. "We're just getting started."

Anthony "Fats" Zucco sat curled up into the corner of his cell weeping silently to himself, a streak of gray in his hair that was not there before. He had been babbling incoherently for the better part of an hour before the thing stopped.

It floated there in its unholy glory, but the darkness around had begun to recede.

"Now you have an understanding of the suffering you have caused with one person." It spoke. "But I'll be back every year, bringing fresh pain you have caused, to remind you over and over again so that you truly pay for your sins."

The sobbing grew more but it was time. A black portal appeared under it, and it sank into nothingness. It was Jones, the guard that found his boss in a blubbering mess fifteen minutes later.

It was morning in Gotham City, surprisingly, the bright, beautiful yellow orange sun gave a rugged, ugly beauty to the structures in Gotham. Raven quietly floated with legs crossed over an abandoned building not far from the Gotham State Penitentiary. She had been quietly whispering her mantra to her to quiet the emotions that had raged out of her all night.

Had she crossed a line? No, she didn't think so. Since battling the hallucination of Slade, to see Robin's trauma of his family plummeting to their death, to hear him crying softly in his room days after the incident justified what she had done.

She was going to keep her promise to that thing in the prison cell. Raven did decide one thing though.

Robin never needs know.