This story will not focus on characters from the show, but rather a new group of less heroic heroes in the same universe. Beginning with Duela Dent.
Put On Your Face
Children can be cruel; the unofficial motto of the Blackgate Juvenile Penitentiary thought Duela, who sometimes went by Dent and at others did not, as she faced the open cafeteria. She tried to imagine the walls as the stark white they had been before time and neglect had faded it into a sickly yellow, but in her mind the building couldn't be anything but rotten, the kind of rot that grows from the walls but settles in the people. If High school is hell then Blackgate was worse and having faced down superheroes and villains Duela found herself more scared at being thrust into interacting with her peers, she imagined even Superman would be afraid here. She was escorted on one side by two hundred pounds of pure vending machine weight wielding a scuffed baton, her feet dragged anxiously at the entrance to the cafeteria and the baton jabbed painfully into her side followed by a hard enough shove to send her stumbling through the gate, which with a loud clang was shut harshly behind her.
With the ease of a trained acrobat she turned the stumble into a hop and skip, drawing a few stares, but that was fine, she was good at being stared at. She preferred it with her makeup on but the idea of wearing it in the detention center had been met with claims that the makeup was 'not conducive to a healthy progression of her mental acuity'. Neither was sticking her in a box with a few hundred teenage girls with authority issues but prison is a system and she had now become just another cog in the machine. A hungry cog.
The service area seemed to glitter, the brown sticky slop calling gracefully to her stomach and she let her nose lead the way. It smelled like mystery meat, only the mystery was whether or not you could hold it down.
"Hey clown girl right?" It was an annoying question, but not as annoying as the voice that delivered it and being an expert in the field of aggravation Duela thought the girl had a bright future ahead of her. What bothered her was that the Joker's Daughter was reserved for heroes, villains, media outlets and fans on her Tumblr blog. "You are that clown girl, Helena I think?"
Helena? When did she start using medieval weaponry and offing mob bosses? The girl must be dense.
"My name is Duela." She muttered a reply and felt like slapping herself. Why was it so hard to be brave when you wore your own face, so much easier just to take someone else's.
"Oh Duela, sorry I must have mistaken you for some serial killer groupie with a thing for clowns." The girl was big. Probably made her own fair share of stops at the vending machine, only the weight seemed to tighten under her clothes and she could see that wherever it began it ended its journey in the gym. Having caught Duela's attention and with more stray eyes pulling toward them the girl stood up, her narrow glare searching for something in Duela to attack. You couldn't get caught throwing around insults and then not follow through, in juvie words were just violence waiting to graduate. Duela formed a witty reply.
"You could say that I guess." Her mouth mumbled in betrayal. Suddenly she was outnumbered her lips having switched sides.
"You know I might have stolen some shit, but you're a whole other kind of crazy ey. Wearing masks, causing trouble. You don't belong here." The distance between them was changing. The girl was coming closer, she felt brave, and taking on a masked villain would earn the kind of respect that might get you through the rest of your stay in peace.
"Put 'er in Arkham!" A girl at one of the tables yelled.
Duela's eyes darted to the guards first. Most of them had turned away and what they didn't see, didn't happen. Were they waiting to see the hierarchy unfold before getting involved? Or was her lack of official records or next of kin a sign that no one would miss her if she was gone.
"You'll need to get over that I'm here the same as-" The words hadn't left her mouth before the fist struck her in the face, stars formed in blotchy patterns of light and her nose tingled, a delayed first sensation that would be followed swiftly with twitch inducing pain.
"You and I are not the same. The Joker killed my ma you sick fuck." Okay, this was personal. Personal was bad. Personal hurt more. With her head still reeling the bigger girl grabbed Duela's hair and yanked her head into the table, her nose colliding once again with a solid surface. Pulled back. Shoved forward. A third collision, only this time something splatted over her face, it still hurt but this was softed. And it wasn't mystery meat! Her eyes weren't working yet so instead she stuck out her tongue pulling some mashed potato inside and swallowing. The mash covered her face.
The girl pulled her close. "You're a monster."
Duela might have argued that point, that deep down she was a girl in pain lashing out at an unfair multiverse. But now she had a mask even if it tasted better than it looked. And with her mask she wasn't Duela sometimes Dent.
"Want to hear a joke?" The Daughter asked her voice barely a whisper, a thin trail of blood running down her chin from her lip.
"What did you say?"
"A joke. Would you like to hear it?"
"I'll fucking kill you." The assailant screamed, shoving the potato covered face into the table again and again. She didn't grunt or whine, there was silence, and then there was laughter. The room grew tense, everyone in Gotham knew that laugh. "Something funny little girl? You aren't a hero or a villain! You're a cosplayer with a psychotic streak who needs to be put down."
Reaching across with her good hand the daughter wedged her fingers between the thick stubby paws of her attacker, her own face still a wide grin, covered in potato salad but not less intimidating. And with nearly inhuman strength she pulled, feeling the joints protest as they made a popping, crunching sound and the fingers seemed to be facing in reverse pulled all the way back across her knuckles. She screamed.
"Neither of us may be super anything, but you sure look like you could use a sidekick." The clown girl bellowed with laughter, and with a hand on the table and another on her attacker she lifted her feet into the air and swung them around her pointed shoes jabbing into the other girl's side.
And with that asses lifted from seats as kids gathered around the escalating fight, it was time for dinner and a show. Someone tried to start a cheer of 'fight fight fight' but a swift slap to the back of their head silenced them while the rest watched the fight, their eyes reflecting violence, Duela wished she had read Lord Of Flies she imagined it would have something to say about the primal nature inherent in children.
The bigger girl swung and Duela leapt backwards rolling across the table ignoring the trays jabbing into her back as she somersaulted to her feet. As a child the first thing Duela's father taught her about fighting had been how to take a punch. A few broken ribs later and she instead learnt a few important lessons.
Lesson one. Give a punch before you take a punch. Playing defensive is playing from behind. And so as soon as her feet touched the ground her fist sailed through the air toward the approaching girl, a vessel of blinding pain delivered to the particularly large and round nose of her opponent. A punch to the nose is like setting off fireworks leaving the other person a bit dazzled but mostly seeing lights.
Lesson two. Taking a punch is overrated and you can't teach your bones to break gently, so dodge. Blinded by lights the next few swings came hard and fast but when it came to wild and unpredictable Duela had the home field advantage, she moved left and right from each clumsy swing like it was a well rehearsed routine.
There was a lesson three she tried to recall but that only brought memories back of the concussion that followed. But lesson four was a constant. Always put them down on the ground. The girl had a bloody nose now and the blood, snot and tears seemed to mix together leaking down onto her snarling mouth. Duela moved forward to finish it when something touched her side.
"Ha Ha Ha Ha no stop!" She fell to the floor laughing and convulsing as the taser was pulled away, it was vending machine guard from earlier and though she wasn't sure how long she had been watching Duela wondered if she had only decided to get involved when she started winning. Life was unfair like that. Two orderlies had restrained the other girl holding her back from kicking the life out of the twisting and twitching body on the floor while they dragged her away toward the hall. For a moment she thought she saw a figure standing in the shadows but she always saw figures standing in the shadows. Only this one sent shivers down her spine. Fear and excitement.
"If you'll follow me Miss Kane. We've had to put the subject in a secure isolation cell as they have presented a threat to themselves and others." The woman speaking was Doctor Tiana Hoff, clinical psychologist and the chief of mental welfare at the women's wing at Black Gate Juvenile Corrections Center. Behind her Kate Kane followed moving carefully through the halls trying to ignore the smell of bleach the staff had tried to bury beneath pine oak air freshener. It smelled fake. Faker than the brochure they handed out at charity events to secure funding but not quite as fake as Tiana Hoff's smile which never reached the corner of her eyes. Kate would call them suspicious but she had a habit of labelling everything suspicious and she was trying her hardest not to become as paranoid as her slightly more famous cousin. Though competing with Bruce Wayne for paranoia would be like competing with Lex Luthor for ego; there is a reason LexCorp Tower was the tallest building in Metropolis.
"The subject? Isn't that a bit dehumanizing?" She had seen the girl fight earlier though Tiana Hoff wouldn't know that, it had taken a large bribe to get access to the cafeteria. She might have been dangerous to others but she seemed to be taking care of herself just fine before the hospital had intervened.
"Her chosen moniker Duela Dent is a fiction she has created. In all likelihood a method of dealing with supressed trauma. We are working on finding her real name but for now we don't want to encourage the delusions." Doctor Hoff spoke as if someone had chosen the most boring psychology textbook and given it a human form in that moment Kate decided the doctor had never smiled in her life. She didn't mind; she rarely smiled herself.
They stopped in front of a metal door, latched shut with a small plexiglass viewport at eye level. Kate peeked through it expectantly. Her face fell.
"Something the matter?"
"Yes, I don't see her."
Doctor Hoff pulled open the latch letting the door swing open toward them. The inside was padded walls bright and white and empty. Her eyes lowered and narrowed at the ground covered in stuffing. "What the hell-"
Kate pushed past the woman and into the cell. Quickly turning examining the walls, to the right of the door the padded mattress had been torn open leaving a person sized hole, the stuffing discarded around the floor.
"Your patient is inside the walls," said Kate wrly.
"Miss what are you doing in there?" Hoff reached forward toward the hole and grabbed an arm yanking Duela from her small nest in the wall. Kate thought she heard something touching upon emotion in the doctor's voice and couldn't help but smile.
"Well you see, when I escaped my straitjacket earlier I found myself profoundly bored and decided I needed to think about my situation," replied Duela, ignoring the incredulous expression forming on her doctor's face, "now I do my best thinking in tight spaces but as I mentioned-"
"-you'd already escaped the straitjacket?" Kate finished.
"Exactly. I couldn't get it back on it wouldn't fit right. So ipso facto- I ended up cutting my way into the wall."
"What did you use to cut your way in?" Kate continued prodding the girl gently.
"Woah there lady, I just met you, that is a personal question between me, my priest, and my gyno." Duela smiled, her grin was lopsided, one side stretching higher than the other. It was not, Kate thought, the grin of the Joker which stretched too far, too high and more importantly too perfectly symmetrical. Bruce was right and the paranoid bastard that he was had sent her along to make sure he wasn't making a mistake. Infuriatingly Bruce rarely made mistakes.
"My name is Kate Kane, I'm here to get you out of here." Kate extended her hand. Duela tilted her head, raising an eyebrow.
"You're honking my nose aren'tcha?"
"I'll leave the humor to you Duela. The foundation I work for thinks you're owed more than a wall made of pillows and three helpings of multicolored pills a day."
"Now wait just a minute Miss Kane I agreed to let you see her there was no mention of a change of custody-" Kane waved her hand, cutting off the doctor.
"We've already sorted the documents which I'm willing to bet are on your desk signed by Commissioner Gordan to turn over Duela Dent into my custody. Go look if you don't believe me." Kane wasn't sure the documents would be there yet but if they weren't they would be soon. And confidence killed objections faster than shrugged shoulders and promises. The doctor looked ready to continue her protest. "Listen I'm taking Duela with me. You don't have to agree with me Doctor Hoff. In fact I understand your doubts and we should definitely discuss them, how does dinner sound? I have an open reservation at Celeste, my chauffeur can pick you up around eight."
Doctor Hoff frowned as her patient and the woman who seemed in need of some psychiatric treatment of her own marched down the hall and away from her. She mouthed her address in disbelief but the words were barely a whisper as they turned a corner leaving her alone in the hallway to piece together what exactly had just happened.
Kane hoped the doctor would show up to dinner, the doctor had managed at least a dozen different frowns in the few minutes they had spoken and each disapproving glance was more enticing than the last. But the first step was getting Duela somewhere that didn't have armed guards and orderlies in their perfect white uniforms carrying pills like candy in one hand and holding syringes full of sedatives in the other. Memories of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest flooded back to her all at once and she imagined a basement with flickering lights and ominous machines that nurses used to run electricity through the brains of patients while cackling madly. Maybe in Arkham.
Walking confidently had a way of avoiding questions and within minutes they traversed their way through the mental health ward and were standing outside in the small lot that served as visitor parking. Two cars occupied the dozen or so spaces, the first a beat up family van that had seen better days and the second a new Audi that beeped twice when Kate pressed her thumb to the door unlocking it.
"Not that I don't leap at the opportunity to jump into vehicles with strangers. I mean imagine the adventures. But I have to ask. Who the fuck are you?" Duela finally said leaning on the car leaving a handprint against the sleek executive black hood.
"Kate Kane."
"And you represent a charity?"
"Yes."
"That got me, a probably mentally ill teenager with a thing for clown makeup, out of there?" Duela jerked a thumb toward the juvenile hall.
"Right."
"And in return you want me to climb in your car and stop asking questions?"
"You're getting it."
"Oh." Duela paused. "Well lead on Kate Kane."
The penthouse was exactly as opulent as Duela imagined, it took thirty seconds to ascend nearly fifty floors of the high-rise, high living hotel using a direct elevator. She wondered if people thought about the speed that elevators move, faster than a car driving in a school zone to climb the nearly quarter-mile tall building, all that speed aimed straight up! It made her dizzy.
"What are you smiling about?" The short-haired socialite demanded looking at her with concern as she took a seat on the long perfectly white couch that watched over the city of Gotham from so high above it was easy to forget about the grime below. Her red hair contrasted the white of the couch, not chemically altered, just so bright and red. Guessing the multitude of ways she could immobilize if I turned out as crazy as some people guessed, Duela considered her eyes meeting her hostess, Kate Kane had the eyes of a predator oh yes she did.
"I was imagining if there was no roof and the elevator kept going, going, going, and just flew out the roof, how high do you think it would go before it plummeted?" She tilted her head brows furrowed doing the math even as she asked the question.
"You want me to think you're crazy?" Kate raised an eyebrow crossing her legs authoritatively. A game of dominance.
"You have my papers." She shrugged her shoulders to the kitchen countertop, brown envelopes marked from the Blackgate, easy enough to guess it was pertinent to her. Though another one mentioned Sylvain Greenbio, that sounded too boring to be among her papers. When Kate didn't reply Duela moved toward an adjacent couch and threw herself down. "Who do you want me to kill?"
Kate froze, "Wait what?"
"K-I-L-L, remove from the picture, put to sleep with the fishes, give the old concrete sandals, uh- ya know? Curtains and adios motherfucker!" She pointed pistol fingers at Kane and fired dramatically. Pew. Pew. "Why else does a rich heiress invite a costumed headcase, sans costume, to her penthouse apartment. You need an assassin duh."
"No nothing like that-"
"-so its a sex thing. Consider yourself lucky I like redheads." Duela wished she had waited until Kate had been drinking something, because the look on her face suggested that she had the potential for a legendary spit take.
"That isn't what-"
"Relax red. You look like a predator after Chris Hansen walks through the door. I'm yankin' your chain." She smiled and Kate raised a frustrated eyebrow.
"You're here because the Wayne foundation has an interest in your rehabilitation. And I owe my cousin a favor. So what that means for the foreseeable future is you're going to be staying here." Kate smiled back now challenging Duela, by offering her everything. And what a lot of everything it was, the windows alone made her legs go soft from vertigo, the lounge was large enough to host a concert and she couldn't see past a crack in the door, but Duela guessed that the beds would have space for ten people.
"Well I'll be slumming it but if the alternative is Blackgate I can make an exception. But we'll need curtains to keep out nosy neighbors."