Spoilers: For various events occurring in Detective Comics issues 751 through 765. Set after #765, "Vacancies," but prior to Batman: The 10-Cent Adventure.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of DC Comics. Batman was created by Bob Kane; Sasha Bordeaux created by Greg Rucka.
Archive: Please ask.
Note: The line "You didn't tell me it felt like that" is taken from Detective Comics #762, "Passings," written by Greg Rucka. Huntress' warning is from Detective Comics #763, "La Cucilla," by Rucka.
The first time Sasha ever stepped off the edge of a rooftop -- well, she didn't step so much as she was pushed -- time slowed down, the same way it has the handful of times in her career that she's found herself on the wrong end of a gun. Her life didn't flash before her eyes, but the seconds began to stretch, and every little detail was magnified and suddenly potentially significant in a way they hadn't been just seconds before.
She remembers the rush of wind in her ears and a strand of hair plastered across her mouth, how sky and ground suddenly reversed themselves and then kept on switching position as she plummeted downwards, and then was just as abruptly jerked back up to the heavens. There was a gray bulk of building at her back, a black bulk of building looming up in her vision, and the neon-lit night sky all around her. Moon and clouds no longer safely far-off, but part of her, or she was part of them, and even through her fear, through the "Our Father" spilling uselessly from her lips (her ears deafened to her own voice), one unexpected and traitorous thought broke through the jumble of white noise: If I have to die tonight, what a way to go. A thought she'd never own up to afterwards, except in her very most secret memories.
And then the black building was holy God right there, and she thought that she wasn't going to die in flight, but squashed into a red smear of blood and broken bones against this steel-and-glass behemoth. One graceless sprawl and skid later, it was over, and she wasn't sure she had any skin left on her face. She crouched for a moment on all fours, aware that he was there staring down at her, and aware of what she must look like, but too brain-buzzed to care, or to do anything about it.
It slowly dawned on her that she was alive, and in one piece, and that all her muscles were singing out in exhilaration in a way they hadn't for years, not since the first time she'd faced down a would-be assassin and won. That had been back in her Secret Service days; she'd disarmed him after a quick chase and slammed him to the ground, and as she'd planted one foot on his neck and ordered him not to move -- not one inch, you son of a bitch, not unless you're not fond of your windpipe -- the same rush had been building up inside her. Nothing in her considerable training had been able to prevent the grin from spreading across her face, though she managed to get it under control before anyone could see.
It hadn't been until later that night that she'd gone for a run and then given into her laughter, had punched the air and screamed until her stomach ached and the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Up on the rooftop, she didn't want to either laugh or cry. What she wanted was to do it again, and soon. You didn't tell me it felt like that.
She thinks that she touched him, in the midst of her giddy struggle to collect her wits. She remembers staggering to her feet, variations on the word wow bubbling out of her, and putting out a blind hand to keep from losing her balance and falling to her knees all over again. She remembers, or thinks she does, her glove-protected palm against his solid wall of chest muscle, layers of Kevlar and Nomex and God knows what else. She thinks that he tensed at the contact. And if he did, of course he did, because no one ever touches the Bat. Not unless they're trying to kill him. He touches others (never with affection), acts upon others; he himself is not acted upon. Not by anyone who likes their bones in one piece.
He'd left her after that, to go break up a carjacking, and she hadn't been able to resist joining in, no matter what he had told her. She wonders what he would have done if duty hadn't called, if he'd had to put up with her adrenaline-drunk babble and errant hand for even five seconds longer.
Now, she sits on the warehouse rooftop where he left her two hours ago, telling her to watch the docks for any sign of the drug shipment reputed to be coming in tonight for the Lucky Hand Triad while he attended to business elsewhere. Something to do with Two-Face or one of the other freaks, she thinks; something he won't let her within a mile of, not after the way she defied him during the Joker-orchestrated Slab breakouts.
So far, there's been no sign of drugs, or, indeed, of any criminal activity at all, and though she's still alert, nerves still keyed to react at the first hint of any illicit movement, she's also letting herself enjoy the moment: the snow, and the white hush that has fallen over the entire city. It's always like this during nighttime snowfalls, even here in Gotham, a solemn calm that, however fleeting, is also very real, and something to be enjoyed.
Her eyes are in constant motion at first, shifting from the white drifts on the docks below to the crystals whirling through the pink-tinted night sky, but gradually she slows and settles, feeling the rhythms of her body adjust to the silence. She presses her palms to the edge of the rooftop, leaving two perfect handprints as she watches flakes of snow land and melt on the sleeves of her costume, and marvels all over again at the chain of circumstances that led her here. She's had frequent occasion to contemplate this over the past weeks and months, but it never seems to get old. Possibly this is because she hasn't yet cornered whatever imp of the perverse led her to say yes -- to training in Batman's employ, to following his orders without question (okay, she's not doing too well with that one yet), maybe even to taking the Wayne assignment in the first place -- or, possibly, because every night in Gotham brings some new wonder or horror.
Last night she watched from the shadows as he rescued a would-be jumper from New Trigate Bridge. The night before, she engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the Penguin's goons as Batman wrestled with the Penguin himself, while the factory windows exploded inward and glass and metal rained down all around them. Batman won, of course; he always does, except for when he doesn't. She knows in her heart that his sacred mission is ultimately a zero-sum game, that he can neither win nor lose and that in the end he'll die trying.
If only...she struggles to articulate the thought. If only he could be satisfied with saving as many people as he can, if only he were able to realize that eradicating all crime in Gotham, forever, is beyond even his considerable reach. He knows this intellectually, she thinks, but will never be able to accept it emotionally, not down deep where it counts.
Black spots begin to dance in front of her eyes if she stares at any one patch of snow for too long. She blinks hard, several times, to clear her vision, and then looks away. Caught daydreaming, and wouldn't Batman just have something to say about that if he happened to return right now? She glances around, unable to avoid a touch of unease as she does so; he could be here, right now, could be standing in the shadows behind her. She'd never know until he was right on top of her. And even that tiniest of lapses would be cause for a lecture. Or for exile.
Black-and-white world: this is, in many ways, the space he exists in. She learned very quickly that shades of gray don't exist for him: there is good, and there is evil, and there's nothing in between. There's his way, and there's...well, nothing else, really. It's not, she would argue with him if she could. The world is not that black and white, not that simple. No matter how much you would like it to be.
She remembers his reaction the night former Commissioner Gordon's house was robbed, the night she came to her possibly erroneous conclusion that the point of his mission was, above all else, to protect people. That he wants to protect people is something she'd never deny; what she's less sure about is whether or not this is his sole reason for what he does. She's seen, more than once, an unsettling glee in his shadowed eyes as he breaks a perp's fingers, or bodyslams a criminal into the pavement.
Surely to rob a house is wrongdoing, a crime no matter how one looks at it. She can't argue with him on that score, nor can she deny that the intrusion into Gordon's house hit him, somehow, on a personal level. But what she remembers most clearly about that night, now, is Donald McKenna, huddled and small and afraid for his life as he sat on the rooftop. The man was a crook, but one that even Batman had acknowledged was non-violent. Leagues of difference exist between a burglar like Macky and a sociopath like the Joker; surely anyone can see that. Anyone, she thinks, except the Bat.
She took on the position of his sidekick because it was the only way she could do her job, the only way she could continue to function as Bruce Wayne's bodyguard. She knows this, and knows she had no other choice. What she doesn't know is how long things can continue like this.
Huntress' warning the night of the Slab breakouts haunts her more than she cares to admit. Just another one of his tools...He'll use you until you're broken, or until you break one of his rules. Then he'll get you killed. That night, she had dismissed the words as bitterness, nothing more. She knows all about Huntress, knows about her fixation upon vengeance and her refusal to avoid lethal force. This is the Bat's town, she told herself at the time, and Huntress knew the rules she had to play by as much of the rest of us do; she couldn't, or wouldn't follow them, so he cut her free. What more had the woman expected?
Now she wonders. Huntress was undoubtedly bitter, but there had been a ring of truth to her words, too; it was a bitterness born of experience. At the end, she'd spoken about flaws, and how failure comes with a price, and her wish to Sasha that the price wouldn't be too high had sounded sincere. She knows herself how exacting his standards are, how there's no margin for error or possibility for second chances.
Ambush Bug, Huntress had called her, and Bittybat, and she wonders if she's anything more. Certainly, he never addresses her by name when she's in the costume. By any name. She knows of his other associates, both present and former, and they all have names: not their true names, maybe, but a means by which he can address them. She doesn't have this. One afternoon, during training, she had asked him half-jokingly if she got to pick a code name now, and he had stared at her with no expression at all for what felt like a solid minute, then turned away. She had never dared to broach the subject again. Sometimes, in the costume, in the mask, she feels her identity slipping away, becoming a thing of light and air rather than the solid rock it had always been before she came to Gotham.
She laughs out loud, suddenly, and the loudness of the sound in the quiet startles her. What a time and place for an existential crisis, she thinks. She knows who she is, she does, and if at times she fears being subsumed entirely into the madness of Gotham, into the Bat's tunnel vision, she has certain things she can cling to. Or so she tells herself; maybe, she thinks, in a sudden flash of bitterness that even Huntress would look askance at, she's fooling herself on that score, too. For one aching moment, she misses the Service so badly that she could cry, and it's an actual physical pain; one hand comes up to her chest, clutching at her heart. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, and lets the snowflakes fall onto her burning eyelids. In the shadows of the buildings and spires, she can sense the creaking of rusty mechanisms, of pieces being moved into place on his black-and-white playing board. Black-and-white world. Pawn to knight's fourth.
God, no more of that. She opens her eyes. Nothing has changed.
Sasha stands up, and looks down at the docks for the space of several more heartbeats. There's still nothing moving, not so much as a scurrying rat, save for the gentle shift and drift of snow in the wind. She hesitates for a minute more, then puts first one foot and then the other on the ledge, and steps up. She half-expects her feet to slide out from under her, and won't that end badly, but her boots grip the concrete firmly, even through the layer of snow.
She plants her feet in military at-ease position, and gazes out over the Gotham River, out into the night. This is probably violating several of the Batman's orders all at once, like the ones about not needlessly exposing yourself before you have to, and maintaining cover until you're ready to move, but she doesn't care. From her precarious perch, the wind whipping at her hair and making her eyes tear in spite of the mask, she can see almost all the way to Blackgate and beyond, and she feels alive the same way she did that first night, freefalling through the Gotham sky.
"Sasha," she says aloud, and holds her arms out to the storm. "My name is Sasha Bordeaux. I'm a bodyguard."