Hey guys! Well, from the encouragement of Nightshade0020, I've written this little story, with no idea where it'll climax, what the climax'll be, or how it'll end. But, other than taht1 Enjoy, revew, and be Merry! I'd like to thank Nightshade0020 and dvvlanzor (sp?) for curing me of my ignorance and unflagging help and supplyment of ideas. Note: You don't have to have seen Batman Begins or read my other Batman fic to get this, but it'll help in later chapters. REVIEW!
Open Minded
Average life. That's what she had. She had an average life. Nothing particularly special about her, other than… well, maybe life wasn't so average. But other than her "colorblindness" she was average. Now she was average. She lived in Gotham City, in the average four room apartment with a mother (who was a model housewife), a father (who went to work at nine and was home at five everyday in the same suit), and an older brother (who was of average grades and average football talent). She was of an average height, with average brown hair at the average length of above past her shoulder blades, with an average sized room with average posters. She was simply average.
At least, that's what she told herself every time she looked in a mirror. She was average. No she wasn't. She was pretty in her own right, despite the slightly disfigured nose from being broken, and the odd shaped feet from being broken, and the weak arm from being broken, and a plate in her shoulder from being broken. Her mind was sharper and stronger than a diamond knife, from being broken. She readily smiled and laughed, though her own jokes were refreshingly dry, with a broken sense of humor. Maybe she wasn't average, she was broken.
And that's what she told herself after she tried to convince herself she was average. True, her life was average, but she wasn't. She was special. Special and broken.
But, life goes on, and so did hers. She woke up that morning, really not wanting to go to school. Average High, it ought to have been called, with average oozing out the walls and dripping off the teachers and pooling on the desks. It was, if possible, the most average place in America, with every expectation and stereotype of a high school being met. But in Gotham it wasn't so average. It was the only school that was never attacked by mobs, or crazies, or district assessments. No one knew it, but that was her doing.
"Morning, Ross." Jake piped as she filed off the bus. How embarrassing for a junior to be on the bus, but she'd had her license pulled for reckless driving. Really, she'd been driving in the Narrows where only mobsters went, which was reckless driving on her part. Even five years later, the Narrows was still worse then it had been before the gassing.
"How very clever of you to have noticed." Ross was uneasy this morning, the same way she'd been when the school was attacked months ago. Fortunately, it hadn't happened again.
"Oh, what's in your mind this time?" Notice how Nac hadn't said "on."
They knew, her friends, they knew about being "colorblind." She just shook her head.
Bean walked up. "Hey dorks." He glanced at Ross and sighed. "Again, huh?"
She nodded. "Again… but different."
Bean just laughed. "Well, whoever it is this time will be in for a nasty surprise. Did you see the guy with the Mohawk last time? He looked like he'd wet himself!" the boys burst into laughter
Ross grinned. That one had been particularly resilient. "He did."
That comment brought a whole new wave of mirth from the boys, but was cut short by Ross collapsing. "Ross, you okay?" Jake gently propped her head up, his hand resting momentarily on the plate in her shoulder. It gave him the chills what had happened to that girl.
"Jake, gimme your keys. I've got to go home." She stood up.
"But you had your license pulled…"
"Like a give a shit right now! Gimme your keys!" In his sight her eyes went black. He mutely handed over the keys.
Rushing home so fast she had two cop cars on her tail, she skidded to a halt at her apartment building, parking in the fire lane. To the officers that had been following her, the car and driver suddenly disappeared and only reappeared when the driver was in the elevator, headed for her family's apartment.
As she stepped out of the elevator that had moved a sickeningly slow pace, a wave of panic rolled over her. The floor was completely devoid of color, except two faint pulsings from under the door of her apartment.
Please, don't let them be dead. Please don't let anything bad have happened. Please don't let him be here. The words repeated over and over, her silent mantra as se opened the door.
Before the narration continues, one should know that Ross wasn't really colorblind. She saw colors, but not the way an average person does. People, souls, were a myriad of color, each one the same make up but drastically different depending on the person. Behind each soul a little trail of color was left, where they touched, where they walked, and with it how they had felt at that time in space. Inanimate objects were a dull grey, outlined by the faded traces of soul that had marked them. But death was black. Actually, death was a void, the absence of color that couldn't be penetrated at all by anything. And right now, the apartment was a gaping hole of darkness.
The two pulsations of color were her mother, and her ex-father. Not many people have an ex-father, but Ross did. Now she had two, because the father she had loved lay in a pool of darkness, right next to the pool of darkness that had been her brother.
"Oh my…" Ross couldn't express grief that way she wanted to, not yet. There was a gunshot, and her mother became a void of her own. "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?"
His drunk slur answered, "Yous isss mine. N-not dis bitcheses. I'm taking… I'm taking yous backd." Just then the cops ran into the room.
One of them called for back up, but she could not hear them, Neither could her ex-father. All they heard was his mental screaming. To him, the world went black. Every blow he'd ever issued was given back to him a hundredfold. Disturbing images floated in his skull. And then, he almost died. At that moment Ross pulled out, leaving him a shriveled shadow of a soul, quaking so violently that the next storm would blow him away. It would have been merciful to kill him.
"What… what happened?" One of police officers called the call for back up short, totally forgetting the reckless driving.
"His conscience caught up with him." Ross went into her room, threw everything she owned into a cardboard box, and carried it out to Jake's car.
Back at school, first period hadn't even started. Jake looked up from where he was copying Nac's homework. "That was fast. Everything okay?"
Ross sat down and let Jake into her mind. When he came back out he hugged her tight, wiping away her tears. "It's okay, Ross, this happens a lot here. It's okay, you can move in with me."
Ross just cried and cried.
"Where exactly do you think you're going?" Bruce walked into his room to find him staring at two suit on his bed. One was black and the other was… black.
Dick didn't look up but instead started pacing around the suits as if they wouldn't be identical if he saw them at a different angle. "I've got a date."
"With who?" Bruce leaned against the door frame as if he was going to enjoy the inevitable argument.
"Girl from school. There's a dance tonight, she wanted me to take her." Dick decided on the black suit.
"Did you want to take her?" Dick began the cross-examination of his shoes.
"Not particularly, but I might as well go and have fun." He chose the less rancid of the pairs of shoes.
"Well, if you didn't want to go, then you'll have no problem with me saying you can't." Bruce began to leave.
"I didn't say that! Who says I can't go?" Dick dropped the suit and shoes on the floor, suddenly heedless of them.
"I say." Dick looked murderous. "Did you read the paper this morning?"
Bick looked like he'd asked if the sky was blue (which in Gotham it wasn't). "When was the last time I read the paper?"
"Right, I forgot, yours is the generation of ignorance. Two-face broke out this morning, along with the Joker and Jane Doe."
Dick's shoulder's slumped. "But we just caught Joker. And Doe gives me the creeps." Dick stood up straight again. "You going out alone, I've got a date." He repeated it as if that made it impossible to deny.
Bruce laughed and walked off.
Dick stared after him for a moment. He calmly hung up his suit, put his shoes back, and called his date, claiming the 24 hour flu, and sank on his bed. Very calmly he screamed into the pillow, "I HATE LIVING IN THIS HOUSE!" Then he calmly put the pillow back, went down to the cave, calmly glowered at Bruce, and calmly thought of rear ending the Batmobile with the R-cycle.
"I'm going to see what Gordon knows, you start searching. And stay OUT OF THE NARROWS!" Batman's voice buzzed into his ear. When I move out, the first thing I'll do is vow never to take on an apprentice so that he won't hate me ferociously.
Not like he hadn't planned on moving out, recently he thought about it more and more frequently. Batman was demanding mentor, even now when Robin could almost surpass his aging teacher. And Bruce was a restricting father-figure, not remembering his father's disciplines and starting from square one. He never got to make any critical choices by himself, and when he did it seemed they always ended badly because of some unthought-of interference.
As soon as the Batmobile was out of sight, he headed directly for the Narrows. He didn't even bother to turn off his locater. See if he can tell me where to go.
Soon, he was stalking the Narrows, the petty rebellion fueling his energy. There was a suspicious body floating down the river, with all of Jane Doe's characteristics, but she'd only been out for 24 hours, she couldn't have possibly already studied her victim enough to mimic him perfectly. She was screwed up, that woman. With no personality of her own, she found people, stalked them, and became them. It was a little eerie. Scratch that, it was Arkham Asylum eerie.
He wasn't paying much attention to the lighting of the place, accustomed to the black of Gotham, he just assumed the Narrows would be a little darker. But soon it was more than a little darker. It was pitch black, and no amount of light seemed to be able to get through. Should I call Batman? No, I'm not supposed to be here, I'll be just fine without him anyway.
No sooner had he thought than then a foreign, more feminine voice answered, You shouldn't be. Go home, Robin, before you get hurt.
He nearly jumped out of his skin. "Who said that?" he shouted, but he couldn't hear the words.
Leave.
"No, not until I know what you're doing here." And who you are.
Then, he was kicked. Hard, in the stomach, sending a web of pain coursing through his torso. Too late. I hope you survive, you never did anything wrong. He heard cracking, it felt like he'd been kicked in the jaw. Searing pain entered just under his shoulder blades. He kneecap was shattered. He got a bullet in his brain. But that wasn't the worst part.
Images swirled just beyond his reach. Demons with drunk faces circled him, laughing as he bent over in pain, swinging at the invisible assailant. Dark shadows swirled at his feet, he could feel the seeping cold rise up through his body as they engulfed him. He knew he was shouting incoherent words at that new voice in his head. He thought, Am I going insane?
Then he heard a scream. He knew it wasn't his, his lungs had been punctured moments prior. He feebly raised his head, every vertebrae in his back cracking with the effort. In front of him sat a man, a man who was obviously withered down by the years of worshiping his beer bottle. He sat in a bright, harsh light, curled up and convulsing. A girl, not far from his age, perhaps a year younger, sat in a chair with one elbow on her knee, watching him as if he were a dying bacteria squirming in its last moments of life. Somehow, Robin knew that the man was feeling the same torture he had, only worse, for he knew that it hadn't been meant for himself, rather for the pathetic man on the floor.
The girl watched him coolly, calmly. Her face was a sheet of ice, Robin felt that if he touched it, she would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Even her eyes seemed to be made of ice. Her irises were as black as the Batcave before the light were turned on, an image Robin had hated inside himself. But her pupils were milk white, as if cataracts had made a permanent home in her eyes. He knew she wasn't blind, because her eyes flicked back and forth, following the twitching of the man.
Finally the man lay still and the girl stood up. Robin was appalled by the sight of his misshapen body, but soon after she stood the chair and the corpse faded away. She was about to walk out, but Robin mentally moaned. Her blind eyes snapped toward him, sending chills down his damage spine.
He managed to think, What did you do?
Nothing. It wasn't real. I was just imaging what I did to him this afternoon, only slower. You just walked in. She crouched in front of him, and he suddenly found himself propped up against a wall he hadn't known existed.
Not real? But it feels real… His head rolled forward, too tired to hold it up.
She slid her hand under his chin and titled his face up. You got hit with the aftershock. I'm glad you didn't keep walking, because then I might have killed you on accident.
He found he could painlessly move his arms, but he was too exhausted to do so. Where did I walk into?
My mind.
He heard her laugh at the face he made. It was light and easy, not harsh like you'd expect after watching what she had done to that figment of her mind. It's complicated. But none of this really happened to you. For all appearances, you're just standing in the middle of the street with a blank look on your face.
He nodded, not understanding at all. I better leave, then.
She laughed again, and he found himself in the middle of the street.
That was weird. He decided that he was leaving the narrows.
No kidding.
He bolted for the R-cycle.
So, what'dya think? Should I bother to write more? REVIEW OR FACE RABID FANGIRLS!