Summary: All criminals were scum, right? So then why did this one, driven mad by Dr Crane's hallucinogen, help him? After Joker's reckoning Bruce Wayne had thought he had seen it all, but then one criminal changed his entire outlook.
Revelations
Deep in the heart of the Wayne estate, below the floorboards and loamy topsoil, laid the caves which acted as the base of Batman's operations. On this particular abysmal and soaking night Bruce sat nestled in his highchair, his hand stroking his chin in thought and his eyes fixed on the image that displayed on all the monitors. So engrossed he was, he didn't even hear the weary butler's approach.
"Short night, Master Wayne?" Alfred set the tray on the desk with a prominent clatter to gather his masters' attention before he too turned his gaze on the image on the monitor. "Someone new in our interests?"
Bruce jerked in his seat, his hands flying to the arm rests of the chair and whirled his head so quick Alfred was afraid he might snap it, however by some miracle the young man was only startled. Alfred felt a tightness in his chest as he noted the wrinkles that had appeared on his ward's face in the few months after Rachel's passing. Granted, Batman was now a fugitive and on the top of GCPD's most wanted, yet that could not have been the least of Bruce's worries.
Nay, it was the loss of his unrequited love, Rachel Dawes, that drove Bruce into his inconsolable grief. Much to Alfred's own sorrow, he could see Bruce slipping. In the beginning, when Bruce had failed to put on the cowl every night as per usual he had been relieved as he thought Bruce had given up on his one man crusade and was going to start anew. In lieu, Bruce began to neglect not just his duties as Batman but other things such as his health, keeping up with the family company, and even social gatherings.
Today had been one of the good days: he had ventured out as Batman for the first time in a month and he had come back with a poorly tended bullet wound. Deep down Alfred knew that his depression was going to cripple him sooner than later. Any day now, he was awaiting his final fall. He could only hope to catch him and bolster any effort he put in Batman.
The grief abated when Bruce turned his focus back to the screens, "You could say that, Alfred."
Alred raised his nose to peer through his half-moon shaped glasses, "And what might have this one, Farzona Shir-Del, done to come on our radar?"
The Persian woman looked every bit as crazy as an Arkham inmate should: long, unkept coal hair, sunken sallow skinned, bright piercing emerald eyes, bordering on anorexic with an unhinged aura to her with a twisted expression to match.
Bruce paused, a hesitation in him that Alfred had not seen since he was but a small child, before he reluctantly began, "She saved my life."
;-;-;-;-;
Four hours earlier
After Harvey's death Gotham had fallen into a solemn hour, however even as that woe of the loss of the their hero hung over them, there was a rising ambition to better Gotham, to be rid of the criminals through the justice system and without Batman: thus, the Harvey Dent bill was passed.
It brought some joy to Bruce albeit that joy was hampered by the weight of his own grief. To add insult to injury, people no longer wanted a Batman hence Bruce could not fulfil his promise to his parents. He was losing all direction completely. Joker almost broke him and with Bruce's love gone, and his conviction faltering, all of this was going to snap him in one moment.
Fortunately, even with all the loathing for Batman, he still had friends it seemed, just not in the most likely places. True, the crime rate had been dropping but there was still injustice being carried out and Batman was not going to be beaten down so easily.
It had been so simple at a glance; a mugging. The couple were cowering in a corner as they were being held at gunpoint.
"Come on, hurry it up, pal!" the masked man jeered.
"Please, we don't have much." The young woman held on to her purse for dear life as he boyfriend silently shook beside her. He looked as if he had been stunned into silence.
The masked man chuckled darkly and cocked his gun, "That's what they all say before I pull out a couple bills with Andrew Jackson's face on 'em, doll."
"Please! Please! We-", the woman's face turned sheet white when something landed softly behind the masked man.
"Da fuck are you starin' at, you crazy broad?" the masked man turned too late as the punch made him fly towards the alley wall.
"Go! Run!" Bruce ordered the couple and returned to the thug. Surprisingly, the couple didn't run. While his back was to them the woman retrieved the discarded gun and pointed it shakily at Batman. Bruce dropped the disorientated thug whom he had by the collar and raised his hands in surrender but remained deathly silent.
"You! This is all your fault! You killed Dent! Now, we have to deal with these scums! Not you!" the woman wailed; tears renewed as she bellowed. "Us! Normal citizens! We must deal with them! Not you!"
The woman's boyfriend shuffled behind her and tried to cajole her, "Frankie, we can just go! We don't have to-"
"No!" the woman swatted him away, "He has to pay!" her untrained fingers pressed the trigger with the kickback almost toppling her fragile form.
Bruce went down, staggering backwards until he hit the wall, and slid down joining the unconscious thug. His hand flew to his bicep and pulled back to see blood trickling down his trembling hand.
"Frankie!" the man pulled her away, "What are you doing?!" the man tugged at gun but she turned on him as well.
"He has to pay! It's all his fault! He has to-" the woman choked on her own spit when a smaller figure emerged from the alley.
"My, my! Even your everyday Jane and Joe really are going to be joining us soon! Looks like the Clown was right!", the raggedly clothed figure, hidden mostly in the shadows, looked as though she had seen better days. Her scratchy voice certainly portrayed that. Though she was thin as illustrated by the way her clothes hung on her, the slow manner in which she closed in with her hands stuffed in her pockets put the woman with the gun on edge.
The young woman pointed the gun on the ragged woman giving Batman the opening he needed. Even injured, Bruce was determined to diffuse the situation.
"Stay back! Stay-" she screamed when the gun was wrenched out of her hand when Bruce barged into her side. He yanked the gun out of her grip and grappled with the woman's remaining arm which tried to take back the gun. Meanwhile a few yards from them, the ragged woman watched bemused and spun to face the other man; he was busy trying to encourage his lover to make a run for it.
It was too easy for the ragged woman to sneak up on him and dragged him away, "Hey laddie, she's not into you. You should come over here and see what's in this corner of the world."
She was surprisingly strong for one so thin and the man's panic grew when he could not escape her clutches. As he cried out in terror, Batman wrested his focus on the ragged woman after he incapacitated the other woman.
By the time Batman caught the faint man, the ragged thief made a runner and vanished from the alley heading for the rooftops. Whilst in the alley, Batman wavered in his gait when he realised, he would be leaving three unconscious people in the alley. After he made a quick anonymous call to the police he also headed for the rooftops.
Exhausted as he was, he was not put down by the distance the woman had already gained. He was bigger and faster and quickly closed the distance. The woman's attention was drawn to him when he landed on a nasty rusted roof of a water tank and shockingly, she increased her own pace.
Batman gritted his teeth when his arm strained after he pulled himself up on the next rooftop and made the same mistake on the next one too, only this time his grip slipped and he hung on his one good arm only. Batman grunted loudly and tried bring himself up, however even the blind could see he was not going to make that.
Further ahead, the woman paused in her tracks and cast a cursory glance around her. One moment, the big bad bat had been chasing her and the next he had disappeared in between the wide cracks. She huffed to herself, amused, but came to another halt when she heard a grunt not too far away from her near the edge of the roof.
Laughing in disbelief at her own luck as she spied the hands of Batman barely holding on to the roof and began to jog away. Still, when she heard another pained grunt, she knew he was going to fall and that thought alone stopped her dead in her tracks. She faced the roof edge completely as she mulled over it in the pouring rain. A long moment passed as the dead night was filled with the pitter patter of the falling droplets and what might have been the last sounds of Batman.
Farzona thumbed the bills in her pocket and chewed on her already-torn lower lip. As exhilarating it was to have beat the bat in a chase, a crazy, impetuous part of her told her she couldn't just leave the man to die because that was all he was: a man in a costume trying to save a forsaken city.
She didn't believe in the good of people, morality, or even laws. She lived life how she wanted to and had successfully done so for the past few years thanks to her life-changing transformation and yet despite not having the conscience to stop herself from stealing from even children to feed her own sick entertainment something forced her to consider saving the bat.
She had principles and respected any man who had conviction, hence why she had even bothered to play tag with the bat. Even so, Farzona would kill any man, woman or child for her next meal either for her stomach or mind. She could beat a helpless tormented asylum inmate to death for looking at her wrong. She could burn an entire precinct down. She could have taken the Joker on just for the heck of it. She could have watched the entirety of Gotham city kill itself… because she didn't care. She was innately selfish and only did something if she could gain something. As such, things like love, compassion and clemency were foreign to her.
But, she couldn't let Batman die.
Although she killed off her own humanity, a part of her wanted to have some sort of hope for the city that she inhabited. After all, she loved it when she crushed the dreams of the pitiful fools around her and one needed hope to dream. That was not to say she wanted to save Batman, but the man that was behind the cowl for she could see the toll it had taken on the man; especially, since the death of Harvey Dent. Personal? It was nothing of the sort. However, it was indeed one of the few acts of kindness she had ever committed. Random, she told herself.
Down below, Bruce's fingers finally lost their connection to the gutter rail and for one moment of oblivious freefall Bruce could not tell the difference between his own tears and the droplets. Perhaps this was how he was supposed to go out? Never had he dreamed of a life without Rachel and he couldn't see his path any long. It was like the road cut off completely. He was lost. Finally, he had thought, it was coming to an end. He was going to be reunited with Rachel.
However, as his hand released the rail, a pair of shocking emerald eyes appeared and bolted her grasp around his forearm. As though the sun was out and the day was as gay as could be, she flashed him a beaming smile and sang, "Bats are not fantastic fliers. You should stay away from the edges."
Struggling, she heaved him up by his good arm and gasped when they both fell back on to the roof, "God, you are heavy! What do you eat? Bricks?"
Stupefied, Bruce stared at the tattered woman under him, frozen in his position. Though the woman looked nothing like a petty thief initially, now that was not the case: he had to revaluate the woman.
"You know, this is not really how I would like to spend my Friday night!" she cocked her head at him, "Not in this rain- Aw geez, you bled all over my arm!" She pushed him off her and moved away but Bruce caught her elbow.
"You're not getting away!" he growled.
"Yeah, yeah", Farzona waved him off casually, "At least cover that up! You know it is rude to bleed over people, right? You might spread AIDS."
"It's illegal to steal, did you forget that?" Bruce reminded her as he stood.
Farzona raised her arms in exasperation but her tone remained light, "Oh so we're going to legalities now? Well, it is illegal to be a vigilante!"
There was a stubborn silence on Bruce's part as he 'escorted' her down to ground level and even so she still surprised him when she easily tore a part of her tattered plaid shirt and offered it to him, "Your arm."
Shivering, they both stood in stunned silence as the cloth hung from her hands. Shockingly, Bruce was unable to get a read on the woman like he didn't know if she would stab him the moment he looked away or if she was being genuine. As if reading his thoughts, she rolled her eyes and tutted, "It's not going to kill you to take it. I just ruined my best shirt for you!"
Uncertain, Bruce took the cloth and slowly wrapped his wound all the while she stood watching with eyes that turned soft momentarily. However, as soon as she caught him staring her gaze turned aloof again. As if she hadn't shown minor concern.
"I'm taking you in." Bruce informed her, sternly.
She chuckled, "I know…" then she threw him a bashful glance before she queried, "Can I at least keep the loot?"
"No", Bruce replied flatly.
She pouted, "What a grump, you are!"
;-;-;-;-;
Bruce robotically began to list her crimes, "She has a history of violence, theft and insanity. Battery and assault, inciting riots, contempt in court, perjury, second degree murder, arson, vandalism… the list goes on…"
He leaned in as he scrolled through the records, "She's been in and out of Black gate and Arkham around the same time as Thomas Shiff."
Alfred also pointed to one of the lower screens in the right, "Says here she came from a small Iranian community from Bleake island, middle class, a single father, no siblings, no history of any criminal record before…" he trailed off as a horrific revelation came over him.
A new type of grief swelled in Bruce's eyes as he finished for Alfred, "Before the attack on Gotham by Crane and the League of Shadows."
Bruce fell back in his chair and ran his entire palm from the top of hi hairline to his chin, "She must have been caught in Crane's fear toxin. Changed her entire psychology and turned her into a monster."
Alfred watched Bruce closely as the man continued to skim her records, "By all rights, this woman is a dangerous criminal."
"That she is Alfred, so why would she help Batman?" Bruce looked to him for guidance.
Alfred patted his shoulder in a way to comfort the man, "Perhaps Master Wayne, there was still a part of her conscience still alive, and she listened to it for once."
Bruce attempted to negate that, "But it doesn't fit her profile."
Alfred lowered his gaze briefly before he looked him in the eye and said, "Sometimes, Master Wayne, sometimes people don't act predictably. They act on instinct, disregarding what others might think of them, and Farzona Shir-Del doesn't strike me as a woman who cares what people say about her."
As Alfred walked away, Bruce stared at the Arkham mug shot of Farzona and pondered to himself if it was indeed a random act of selflessness or if there was something more behind her actions.
There might be a part 2!
Inspirations:
Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore
Batman: No Man's Land by Rob Gale and Devin Grayson