I did not create nor own Batman/Bruce Wayne, Dr. Leslie Thomkins, Lucius Fox, or Gotham City. I did create the other characters in this story. This story is for entertainment purposes only, so please read and be entertained.

(Two years before Batman began roaming Gotham)

The seventeen-year-old, blonde female shivered on the bench. She could barely be seen in the smoggy darkness by the light of the distant street light. She huddled with her arms wrapped around herself and kept her eyes on her knees.

He smiled and pointed to her. The other man flashed a grin and nodded. He strode across the street, staying beyond the beams of the streetlamp.

The blond didn't hear the tall man until he spoke a few feet beside her. "Heya toots! Got something for me?"

She shot to her feet, and began to back away. "No . . . no . . ."

The man drew something out of his pocket and flipped the butterfly knife open while approaching her. "Oh, I bet you do."

Blue eyes stared at the knife while her feet continued to back away step by step. She felt a huge mass step up behind her and turned with a squeak. A much taller, broader man growled while pointing over the other man's shoulder. "Get out of here."

The other man turned and raced off into the darkness. The girl turned to the second man, tilting her heart-shaped face upwards. Two dimples appeared in the corners of her grinning mouth. "Thank you!"

"What's a sweet thing like you doing our here in the dark?"

The girl's face fell and she bowed her head. A thick set of fingers tilted her chin back up to look into the man's face. "Need a place to stay tonight?"

Her smile returned beneath wet eyes as she gave a slight nod. He wrapped her arm around her slight shoulders and led her to a neighborhood she had heard to stay away from, but she felt safer than she had all night. He took her inside the apartment building and up the stairs. There he opened a door and gestured her inside. "Just let me know if you need anything."

"Do . . . do you know of any place looking for a waitress or maid or something, maybe you need a maid here. I don't want to be burden."

"Oh I know where a pretty girl like you can make more in one night than a waitress or maid makes in a month."

"I . . . I don't do things like that."

The man's meaty shoulder rose. "Suit yourself. If you want things you can't get as a maid or waitress, all you have to do is flash that pretty smile at me and a few people I know."

Over the next days he touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable and drove her places she didn't want to be, but he had saved her from something she was certain would have been worse, so she said nothing. She said nothing when he never took her to the places she asked him to. She said nothing when he sweetly insisted he couldn't let her go back out into that cold world until he saw her well on her way. Finally, the things he did made her feel as if she was no longer too good for that work. When he took her money to put toward her expenses she still said nothing. She especially said nothing when his eyes suddenly flashed hard, and his grip suddenly got painful. She had no one but him anymore, him and the other women who saw through him. So, the night Batman sent her Samson to the hospital, Alice rocked herself on her bed, and cried.

. . .

Samson scowled up at the ceiling of the ambulance. This was the second time a traitorous (censored) and an uppity fighter had put him in one of these. This was why he didn't trust them. They always did this to you. But he'd learned.

He'd been a fool when he'd thought he'd seen the pride in her eyes as she met him with the press of her lips and body against his sweaty skin after every match, whether he won or lost. He thought she ment everything she said all those nights. He believed her when she said they were on top of the world, on their way, going all the way. He hadn't hid his injury from her. He'd seen no reason why. Just when he could have had it all, his opponent took advantage of that injury. He'd looked for her after that match, and hadn't found her. She'd come to the hospital a few times. Then she stopped. It wasn't until he got out he'd learned she'd cleaned him out, his savings, his trophies, his drugs and bottles, and then he'd seen her on the tube, with him, the reigning champ of the ring, standing there with his enemy when she should have been standing there with him.

He'd learned. He couldn't get to her, but he'd make every (censored) like her he could get his hands on pay, pay for everything they took from him. And that Bat would pay too, oh yeah, he'd pay big time.

. . .

The meeting to discuss "Escape Route" and other projects like it lasted three hours and an entire pot of chamomile tea. Afterwards, all involved felt only slightly more hopeful about Gotham's future than they had before the meeting. As soon as Lucius left, Leslie laid her hand over the closed fist Bruce had on the table. He turned his gaze to meet hers.

"Bruce, what will you do if five years from now nothing in this city has changed?"

Bruce looked down to study the map laid out on the table.

"Everything changes one way or another."

Leslie rolled her eyes and tried again. "What will you do if everything's gotten worse?"

"Attempt to create or implement tactics better than these."

Leslie laid her head down on the table. Bruce raised his gaze from the map to watch. After a moment a mumble came from the face pressed into the wood. "What have I done to you, Bruce?"

The younger man reached out and laid a hand on one of hers. She looked up to meet the gaze of stormy-grey eyes that were locked on hers. His tone was deep and firm. "If you hadn't made me see beyond my own pain, you would have already lost me to it."

Leslie sighed, sat up straight again, sipped her tea, and said, "I think Jeannette Phillips is going to need outpatient therapy when we release her."

Bruce smiled at his godmother.

"For how long?"

"Oh . . . it could be a while these things can't be rushed, in spite of some stubborn patients insistence on trying to do so." Leslie stared very hard at Bruce over the teacup she'd raised to her lips while saying this.

Bruce quirked an eyebrow at the Doctor. Then he held his own teacup out towards her. "To outpatient therapy."

Leslie touched her cup to his. "To patients being willing to accept a doctor's advice."

. . .

Two days after the man of the house was taken away in an ambulance Madge left the apartment building hours before she was due at the club. As she shut the door behind her, a soft voice behind her made her spin around. "Are you going to see Jeannette?"

Madge met a pair of powder-blue eyes and a tiny smile that couldn't make the two little dimples she knew were there pop out. She didn't try to hide the gravel in her own voice as she turned and began to stride down the hall.

"Yep."

"Can I come with you?" The other woman asked, following behind. "I want to see Samson."
"I'm . . . going to make a stop on the way," Madge replied.

"I don't mind."

Madge let out a long breath before muttering, "Fine."

There were a lot of other speeches she told herself she should have said, in which every other word was an expletive, but she didn't. Something in her knew it would do no good, something inside her had given up.

. . .

"Hi Jeannette."

"Madge," the woman mumbled around the tubes out of one side of her mouth. She continued as the other woman stepped into the hospital room. "How's Samson's hand?"

Madge shrugged as she sat down beside the hospital bed. "I don't know. I can ask Alice when we leave together if you want."

Madge saw Jeannette's still open right eye roll. Madge bent down and opened the plastic sack she'd carried in with her. "I got a few things to help you pass the time since I've got a little cash to blow, for now."

Madge held up the stack of fashion magazines over the rail of the bed and up toward Jeannette's swollen face.

"You're sweet . . ." the patient sputtered around the tube. Madge gave her a tired half-grin.

"Actually, Francesca told me what to get. You should know that since it's the two of you who dress me. She said she might be by later."

"Why didn't she come now?"

I think she's still sleeping off her late night with her new guy."

"Ah!" Jeanette replied with another eye roll.

. . .

"Hi Sam."

He glanced up at the door. He was bored, and she looked pretty. Besides he needed her for a few things. So he met her tiny smile with a wider one of his own.

He watched her take tiny careful steps toward him while watching the floor for cords. She was just like her, maybe less tall, less muscled, but that pretty little mouth sputtered just as much sweet poison. Oh well, he was immune to it now.

"Come over here and show me you're happy to see me."

She bowed down with puckered lips. He met them with his own. She pulled back, and gave another forced quarter-smile. "I thought about bringing flowers, but I know how you hate me wasting money."

"That was a good girl, was Francesca a good girl last night. Did she come back?"

"She . . . she came back."

"Did she bring money?"

"Oh she must have."

"What are the (censored) doing with their dough?"

"I think they're keeping it for you, for when you come home."

"They better be. I want you to make sure they do, and I want you to do something else for me."

"What?"

"One of those other (censored) called in the Bat to do this to me. I can't let them get away with that."

A chill went the young woman's body. "Are . . . are you . . . sure."

His left hand shot out, grabbed her wrist, and squeezed. She winced as he growled.

"I'm always sure."

"She smiled as her eyes stung and managed to speak without whimpering."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Find out which (censored) let him in. You'll do that baby . . . right?" He released her wrist.

Alice nodded while rubbing the sore joint with her other hand. "Uh-huh."

Samson puckered his lips and she knelt to meet them with hers.

Reviews are much appreciated and often responded to.