Chapter 23
Emma sat astride the rooftop of her home. She was with her feet planted across the valley of a gable. The slope of the hill falling below her; the bushy hillside, the meandering stream, acre after acre of suburban homes, reaching all the way to Gotham City. An azure skyline, clean and crisp, with a column of smoke in the skyline.
The news reported a body count of over one hundred. They said that was a lucky outcome, considering.
Considering.
What did that mean? Considering that the attack had occurred at night? Considering there were only a few pedestrians about? Considering it was the financial district, and the people who had died were not particularly well-liked?
Emma hugged her legs a little closer to her chest. There was a breeze picking up. Summer no longer feeling warm and comforting. It felt insufferable.
The sound of the sliding door opening. Below her: someone stepping out onto the patio. Emma had lived in this house her entire life, she could discern each member of the family's footsteps: William was thin and wiry and hardly made a sound, her father was broad-chested and walked as hard as he laughed; her mother walked gracefully.
Emma did not recognize these footsteps: crisp, tonal, and a little hurried, as if they were anxious. The footsteps walked out on the concrete of the backyard patio and came to a stop right before the garden. They were taking in the horizon.
Several minutes passed. Emma heard long, ragged breathing below her. And then—
"It's not your fault, you know. None of this is. Your brother is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay."
Emma was too depressed to be surprised. It was Lucius. Of course he knew she'd be up here.
"I'm too old for fairy tales, Lucius. I'm starting to realize that the good guys don't always win." Then, a brief moment of hesitation, the sun unmoving in the sky, the slate roof warm underneath her jeans, the column of smoke on the horizon like an accidental smudge of charcoal on a mural, and Emma finally mustering up the courage to ask: "So how is my brother?"
"He left to the city. Your parents tried stopping him. He threatened to call the police."
"Of course he did." Stubborn, idiotic, and brilliant—her brother all the way.
"It really isn't your fault, Emma. You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened. "
"Do you know how many people were killed in the explosion, Lucius?"
Lucius was silent. With an idle finger, Emma drew circles in the minerals of the slate roofing.
"One hundred people," she said. Her finger moved aimlessly on the tile. "And that's only the people they've found so far. There could be more people buried, or the people in extensive care could succumb to their injuries."
"There was a report today on the news," began Lucius; he had taken a big breath of air before speaking. "A tankard in the Southeast pacific blew up because of a cabinet fire. It killed everyone on board—nearly a hundred men. But perhaps you blame yourself for that, too?"
"I would, if I could have done something about it."
"I've always hated that word, you know."
"What word?"
"'If.' It's such a deceitful word."
Across the horizon, an airplane crawled against the blue sky. The breeze rattled the flowers in the garden. A caravan of cumulous clouds glided toward the sun—any moment now, the patio would collapse into shade.
"You could nothave saved Wayne Enterprises, Emma. You're holding yourself to ridiculously high standards."
"To whom much is given, much is—"
"No, that doesn't apply here, Emma. Look at your mother, look at your Uncle. They are struggling against this man Roland. Do you have any idea how much experience they have in these matters? And yet you expect to defeat him single-handedly?"
The clouds tipped into the diameter of the sun; the sky was turning. And the entire valley, garden, and rooftop dimmed. The breeze continued, and without the sun, now a little chilly on her forearms.
"How is my mother, Lucius?"
"How do you think? She blames herself for your brother. And your father, in turn, blames himself. And I'm sure you're following that pattern. Everyone is taking turns taking the blame."
"I am to blame, Lucius. Maybe not for Wayne Enterprises, but for my brother. I saw him go into those sewers. I abandoned him. And earlier, at breakfast, I couldn't even look at him in the face."
"William was serving his duty as a GCPD officer," said Lucius. "And he disobeyed orders when he went off on his own to track down Roland's agents. I know it hurts to hear, Emma, but your brother's destiny is of his own making. He did this to himself."
"But if I was there with him," insisted Emma, "he wouldn't have been poisoned."
"No," said Lucius firmly. "You both would have. So let's be thankful it's only one Trevor."
Lucius still did not understand. He would never understand.
"Back at Wayne Enterprises, I fought more of them," she said quietly. "I kicked one so hard in the face his jaw came off, Lucius. And do you know what that man did? He got back up, that jaw swinging back and forth like a pendulum—"
A stronger breeze. Emma curled tighter into her ball.
"He's going to be fine, Emma."
"I couldn't even look at him at breakfast, Lucius. I kept seeing his jaw detached from his face. Those dead eyes. My little brother."
"Ra's said that if he takes the serum on a regular basis —"
"Did you find that cure?"
"We're still breaking down the serum, Emma. We won't know its composition—"
"Did you find the cure, Lucius."
Lucius was quiet again; an irritated exhalation of breath. Tears fell down her cheeks, onto her knees. The breeze stung her red, welted eyelids.
"I'm his big sister, Lucius. I'm supposed to look out for him. He's not like me, or my mom. He's more fragile than people think. I know he puts on a hard face, but he's just a little kid."
"These are trained killers, Emma," said Lucius finally—defeatedly. He didn't have anything else with which to comfort her. All he had left was the truth. "And you're just one person."
"So was he," she whispered into her thighs. The breeze whisked her secret away, over the garden, down the hill, through endless columns of bushes and trees, into the great vacuum of stillness on the horizon.
"Who? What was that Emma?"
Emma stood up from the rooftop. Something she had been thinking about. "Let's take a drive, Lucius?"
"We can't go into the city, Emma."
"We're not going into the city, Lucius."
She dropped down onto the patio: her boots impacting the concrete, her black hair whirling in the air, then she was standing up straight. Holding her palm out. "Do you want me drive?"
An odd-sounding energy in her voice, like her soul had been repossessed. It clearly discomforted Lucius. He was holding onto the suitcase in his hand with a suspicious worry on his face, like he might have to raise the suitcase in self-defense. But nothing came of it; the two of them stared each other for only a few seconds—what felt like a minute, and Lucius had the fleeting impression that there was more of this come.
He resignedly dumped his keys into the palm of her hand. "Try and not crash this one, okay?"
They headed around Gotham City, not towards it, and Emma steering his new Mercedes with the precision of a dynamite stick. But it didn't make a difference. It takes two to tangle on the highway, and the highways were empty. Like ants on a giant's shoulders, they traversed the yawning immensity of the hilly countryside outside of Gotham. Highways carving into the hills by a giant's hands; the contours of the winding embankments, yawing and pitching underneath craggy mountains—the sun all the time sinking behind the hills, the sky bleeding out midnight ink, the clay earth falling away to granular shadows of bushes and trees. They were in the outskirt forests now, and the sensation of wild coyotes, maybe even a lurking wolf, just beyond the slung shadows of the forest.
Lucius knew precisely where they were going—felt it in his throat, as invisible yet certain as the air expanding in his lungs.
"It's getting dark," pointed out Lucius. "Your mother will be worried if we don't head back."
Emma kept driving – almost smirking, as if to say: nice try.
They came into a dense arcade of poplar and great oaks trees; the road suddenly coalescing into polished cobblestone; the dappled moonlight beginning to glow luminous on the floor. The tires of the Mercedes rollicking, a bumpy humming in the car.
The certainty in Lucius's throat tightened. He had been down this road many times, in a previous life.
At the end of the arcade loomed a massive iron fence – the spokes sticking up warningly like the palisades for a fortress. Beyond the fence was a horseshoe driveway, curling and enormous, a large fountain sitting at the center of it. And as the Mercedes gained on the cobblestone, from the center-focus of the arcade, rising up behind the horseshoe driveway, emerged the twin towers of a mansion.
"It's an orphanage now," explained Lucius. "You need a visitor's pass to get in."
Still Emma pressed hard on the gas; the Mercedes's grille growling, eagerly eating up the cobblestone path, hungry for the rich marble treasure at the end.
"The kids are probably all asleep, Emma," insisted Lucius. "You're going to wake them all up."
The mansion fully in view now – stony and sublime; a long square exterior of cornice windows, pointed arches, and imposing stone walls. Balustrades along the crown of the mansion, like defensive crenellations. The stocky mansion sat authoritatively underneath the moonlight: implacable, impassive, like a solid bulwark capable of outwaiting any siege war.
They were nearly at the iron gates – the first obstacle to pass, the moat, and Emma gunning straight for it.
"Emma, what are you!?—"
She flung the car off the arcade road, blustering into the perpendicular black. She whipped the headlights to life, and twin cones of light blew up the forest immediately ahead. Gnarly tree trunks whizzing by them, branches swinging overhead, and the dyad glitter of an owl's eyes staring at them from the darkness. The Mercedes bouncing, Lucius gripping the car handles with both arms, and Emma driving with her eyes intense—the most focused he had ever seen her.
How was she navigating? How could she see anything?
The tree trunks lurched vainly. The branches swung and missed. And somehow, Emma never hit anything in the forest. The Mercedes whined on the forest floor—it was designed for smoothness, not wild terrain— and there came another sound from it: a toiling, whirring boil. Lucius prepared himself for the engine to burst into failure from maybe a clogged system, or a stone kicked up into the axels.
But the Mercedes righted itself onto a soft clay path that ran in the middle of the forest. A path perfectly illuminated by the moonlight, ploughed by a lifetime of use. But what car would drive way out here—so far out in the middle of nowhere?
The toiling, crashing sound billowed to a crescendo; and Emma brought the car to a stop, the headlights spotlighting a furious, churning waterfall ahead. The water falling through the cone of light transmuted into thousands of yellow bright crystals.
The Mercedes hummed patiently. And Emma and Lucius sat in the car, waiting.
"You know where we are," said Emma quietly.
Was that a question? Was that a statement? The delicateness of Emma's voice was pillowy and blade-sharp.
A dollop of clay seemed to clog up Lucius's throat; hard to swallow, hard to speak.
"It's alright, Lucius," continued Emma. "When we were down there in that bunker, that gigantic beast of a vehicle; the computers, the arsenal of weapons . . . all of that was his, wasn't it? I recognized it from the newspapers."
The Mercedes hummed underneath their seats. Outside, the waterfall churning reliably and faithfully along to a steady beat. All the woodland creaks and chirps closing in around them—And Emma kept speaking along—merciless.
"And that got me thinking about all the special gadgets he used: his armor, his jet, his grapnel boost, his batarangs. I always figured he had to have been a genius to make all those things. . . or have a genius working for him."
Lucius breathed—it was the loudest thing in the cabin of the Mercedes, muting out the crash of the waterfall, boxing out the stillness of the expansive forest. Emma kept going.
"I know what Mom saw in Dad—my Dad, I mean. He's funny, he's kind, he's sweet—always makes you feel like you've known him your whole life. He's a good man. But Bruce Wayne? I—I mean, growing up, it was hard to believe that my mom would choose a guy like that—arrogant, lazy, and sexist. You told me yourself how he slept in boardroom meetings, how he never showed up on time. He was a terrible person."
"Emma," began Lucius with a tight, muted voice. He wiped the sweat of his forehead. "I don't think it's the safest thing to hang around a forest at night. Maybe we should turn around—?"
"Somebody else told me a story about his 31st birthday party—he nearly drove his helicopter into his penthouse, and then he laughed it off. How could my mother love someone like that? I deal with those guys all the time—on the train, at work, on my way back from work: Arrogant assholes who think they own women. And I hatethem, Lucius. I hate them so much. I couldn't stand kissing them, let alone bear the thought of having children with them."
"You clearly have a lot on your mind, Emma. Why don't we go back home and talk about it? I believe William would like to hear some of this—"
"Maybe she liked bad boys—that made some sense to me," said Emma plainly. "A lot of girls like alpha idiots. And Bruce Wayne had 'bad decision' written all over him, didn't he? But I think there was something else to Bruce Wayne—I suspect Mr. Billionaire-asshole had a softer side to himself. A side that he showed my mother. My mother always loved to be the heroine, didsn't she? I doubt nothing appealed more to her sense of duty than a misunderstood, mal-adjusted rich boy who she believed she could save . . . and he was rather handsome—that helps," she added thoughtfully.
Lucius was no longer talking – what would be the point? He was trying to redirect an avalanche twenty-one years in the making. And it was finally here, unseating him, tumbling him down a mountainside, and Emma ploughing more and more snow, uncovering more skeletons, more secrets buried in the past. It was time to raise the dead from their slumber.
"And it got me thinking about the night Ra's Al Ghul came to town," said Emma. "He said that this city's greatest defender trained with the League of Assassins. That's how Alfred knows Ra's. That's how you know Ra's.'"
Her body shook and she put her hands on the steering wheel to relax herself. She had to get it out. It hurt, the secrets in her belly. Like a cushion of needles, a handful of jacks. The secrets poisoning her, scarring her stomach muscles, pressing against her lungs.
The darkness of the forest seized the present moment—that stillness, that arid lining of reality, and clung onto it, refusing to let go, like a string pulled tightly on a nail, tighter and tighter until the tension reaches its zenith and snap!
"Who am I, Lucius?" she asked quietly. "Who is my father?"
The question rebounded eternally—the torn body of that string redoubling and flapping. Lucius stared ahead at the waterfall. She saw the thoughts on his face; the fast and furious methodical thinking in his eyes. Five minutes slogged by – purling shadows of trees hanging at the edge of visibility; a cratered moon above the treeline; and the soft clay of earth steady beneath them.
"It was for the best, Emma," he said finally. "We were just trying to protect you."
Emma stared ahead; the forest implacable and still, offering her no mercy, no solace. Ugly, unfeeling truth.
It was true. It was all true.
The painful entity surfaced out her throat. She gagged on emptiness, she choked on air. Her body shivering, her seated position spinning to the earth's rotation. The waterfall ahead: a million yellow crystals falling like a lucky pot of gold.
"I know that's not the answer you want to hear," continued Lucius in the same tone. "I know you must feel angry. But I didn't tell you the truth—we didn't tell you the truth because lives depended on it. Nobody could know. Do you understand?"
"No," she said in a small voice. Her fingers hugged the steering wheel.
"Your mother and I talked about it. One day, when enough time had passed, she was going to tell you. She was going to tell you everything."
"One day," repeated Emma—when? How?
"I'm sorry it took so long, but—"
"When were you going to tell us?—how could you not tell us?"
"We did what we thought best," said Lucius firmly. He was not going to argue this point any further.
What else was there to say? To do? She had asked and he answered; now the only thing left was to accept it. The numbingness seized her body; her blood carried hallucinogenic oxygen to her muscles, lifting her up like the strings of a kite, a ribbon of velvet floating across a nighttime sky. None of Lucius's words felt real: they were an illusion, just like the falling crystals in the waterfall were an illusion, a temporary trick, and once the lights were shut off, reality would reinstall itself.
And yet, her heart thumped loudly in her chest; every moment the truth ingratiated itself into her body. This was a life long struggle to find herself, and the discovery came underneath a bandit moonlight, in a forbidden forest, before a hidden cave—it all spoke of some adventure tale. She was the girl destined for more, who looked out onto the sunset, waiting. And here it was—the unveiling of the hidden secret, the revelations of the past.
Had she always known? A small part of her, nested stubbornly in the corner of her subconscious, always suspected, always nudged her along, guiding her toward this moment.
It was why Emma had navigated the forest so easily; she just had to follow the signs.
Lucius sank a little more into his chair, looking more relieved than reproving.
"How did you figure it out?"
"Bits and pieces," said Emma numbly—her forebrain had assumed autopilot of her mouth; she was still spinning in the new truth. "Things you and Mom and Alfred would say. You guys thought I wouldn't notice."
"I mean the waterfall, the cave."
"Oh . . . at Niagra falls, the week after our elementary culmination. William slipped on the wet rocks, broke his bone. Alfred said, 'we should just take him to the hospital,' and you pointed at the waterfalls, saying—"
"'Maybe they have x-rays in there?'" finished Lucius, smiling softly. "That was nearly ten years ago, Emma. You remember that?"
"Always did."
Slowly, Emma undid the clasps of her fingers on the steering wheel. She unbuckled herself—spinning or not, the world was still here, and she wanted to leave her footprint on it.
"Can we go inside?"
Lucius shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea, Emma."
"That's not what I asked, Lucius—"
"Easy, Emma. That's not what I meant. The system has been shut-off for decades. It can make noise if we try opening it up. Attract the wrong kind of attention."
Emma stepped out into the night air – cool, crisp, earthy smell. A breeze whispering on her cheeks. Pine-needles crunching underneath her boots. The waterfall's roar like an incoming train—always getting louder, more personal.
"I'm going inside."
Lucius's passenger door opened. He came out hurriedly. "Hold on, Emma. I'm not sure that's a good idea—"
But she was already gone, moving forward, hypnotized by the spell. Beyond the sheet of falling water, underneath the yellow crystals, hung the impossibly black void. A warp tunnel into another reality; of new possibility, of secrets and sorcery. And she no longer commanded her legs; the spell had taken her, called to her—destiny.
"Emma! Emma, wait there's a security system!"
"Then turn it off," countered Emma. Her legs carried her forward.
"Dammit!" Lucius quickly slipped around into the driver's side. And Emma came to the lip of the earth – the Mercedes's lights on her back, the mist of the crashing water dousing her. A million tiny water droplets clung to face.
Without thinking, without doubt clouding her mind—she leaped. The moon somehow growing bigger but strafing at the same distance, like a carnival optical illusion. The waterfall enclosed her, the water assaulting her senses, encircling her membrane, becoming her dangling forever—
She flew through the void, hollering. The blackness swallowed her down its gullet, and for a moment she was slipping through gravity and time; axis-less, unmoored vacancy. It terrified her and exhilarated her. And quite suddenly, the cave-floor yanked her out of oblivion.
Cartwheels along the cave floor; the pain flaring all along her hipbone like some emergency alert: knees, ankles, thigh, hips, arm—red alert. Her entire body tumbling over the bed of rocks, her voice still hollering like some accompanying movie score.
Finally, she stopped tumbling.
She heaved; she breathed. She ached all over. Slowly, she picked herself up. She listened carefully while her eyes adjusted to the black. Behind her, the roar of the waterfall, the ghostly echo of her screaming. And all around her, the high-slung shadows of the cave slowly materializing before her eyes.
Her eyes adjusted, and as they did, the cave came to life: a lake of black water emerged at the center, as still and tranquil as death itself; stalagmites rose up out the rock like flowers of an undead garden; stalactites sliding down the ceiling like the tears of some underworld lord. And across the far end of the cave: columns of flowstone hanging, like a grand pipe-organ for the dead.
And all the time, a deep-chested gurgle emanating from underneath the cave. For a wild moment, Emma readied herself to face a giant slumbering beast. Like in a storybook; she had trespassed into the giant's cave, and with her wits and strength, she must fight her way out.
But no beast emerged from the lake, no underworld lord came down from his throne.
Instead, the familiar sound of hydraulics shifting and pistons firing—the same hydraulic-sound she recognized from the elevator carrying her down to Wayne Enterprises.
Ripples across the surface of the black lake – the water frothing over itself as something emerged at the center—a hulking black beast, an implacable miracle of metal, rising up out of the lake. Sheets of water dripped off its chassis, glossing the chassis in lush obsidian black. At the same time, soft blue lights lifted the cave into better clarity—things she could not see before: railings, stairs, desks, worktables, and cabinets. All of it black and blue, all of it hidden, all of it waking up from a dormant sleep.
And walkway emerged out of the lake, but it kept so level with the water it was like walking on water. Across the pathway stood a large platform, for a moment, nothing else happened. But that platform was too big, too deliberately designed to be empty space. Emma followed the signs again, she walked across the walkway.
On either side of the pathway, the water offered up her black-blue reflection: she did not recognize herself; she saw only a silhouette. Tall, long haired, and female. A wraith.
When she crossed the pathway, more pistons—she had expected it, like she had been here before. And in some ways, she had.
A glass cabinet rose up out of the center of the platform—it dazzled with clarity, it was the only cabinet not encased in black. Inside the glass cabinet, hanging like a fossilized prehistoric predator, was a black suit. Emma stood up the foot of the cabinet; and in the reflection of the cabinet, she and the suit came up to the same height. Emma's hazel eyes stared at her from out of the narrow slits of the cowl; her jaw fit easily underneath the grooves of the cheekbones.
A near-perfect fit, but maybe with a few modifications to the waist and chest.
Behind her, she heard frantic splashing. Lucius was coming up from the mouth of the waterfall.
"Emma," he was saying, gasping. "Wait."
The cowl's intense, angsty features glared at her. The sculpted pauldron shoulders, the sleek waist; biceps swinging with strength, a merciless interrogators bootheel.
"I'm not waiting anymore, Lucius. I've done enough waiting."
"You don't know what you're asking for, Emma. I know this all looks impressive, but that thing you're looking at . . . it killed your father. And he was the best there was."
"People are dying, Lucius. And I'm not going to stand around. Not when I can help. I don't have a choice in this, don't you see?"
She turned around; Lucius was at the end other side of the pathway; his clothes soaked, his face red. He looked like he had just come off a stormy ship. But the way he was looking at her— sad, soft eyes—made Emma feel a tad unsure of herself.
"What, Lucius?"
He adverted his eyes, looking into the reflection of the tranquil lake, like he could see into their depths. "Your Dad, Emma . . . he told me the same thing, twenty years ago."
Suddenly a flying monster came screeching out of the empty void of the cave—a bat, soaring through the cave air, serene and deathly-black, encircling above them both. It danced in the air for a moment before swooping out of the mouth of the cave, leaving behind only the shrieks of its nocturnal presence.
Lucius walked down the stairs of the platform. He moved gingerly, tiredly—defeatedly.
"Your mother will find out about this, Emma."
"I'm a grown woman, Lucius. I'm not afraid of my mother."
Which was not true—Emma knew that, as did Lucius. Nobody was every 'ready,' were they? She looked at herself inside that suit again; something about its weight instilled Emma with a new steadiness. How composed was a young Bruce Wayne, her father, on the eve of his own first excursion—wasn't he afraid? Did Alfred or Lucius approve of what he was doing?
The answer was no. Adulthood, Emma was quickly realizing, was a sobering thing. People gave you advice, helped you along, but ultimately, it was up to you, to decide what was right.
"Are you ready?" she asked of the girl in the reflection.
The girl in the reflection: pale, wet, trembling. Because the truth was that nobody ever knew. Not even family. They loved you, helped you, cared for you. And with that love, you do the best you could.
"Are you ready," she whispered again to the suit. "Were you?"
Lucius lingered on the stairs. He called out again, something final and resigned in his voice. "If you do this, you have to make me a promise, Emma. The same promise your father made to me. I offered him my services on one condition: that when the fighting was done, when the city could look after itself, when the city no longer needed Batman, he would retire."
Such an easy request irritated Emma: it was so obvious. All things came to an end. A problem needs a solution. Once that equation is fixed, what else remains?
"Of course, Lucius. I promise."
She felt his lingering presence behind her; he was staring at her shoulder blades, his face worn and leathery.
"Right," said Lucius. His voice sounded like a fading memory. Going, going—gone.
He shuffled away, and Emma turned her attention to the rest of the cave: the overwhelming sensation of a thief in the bank vault; a child in a candy factory—where to begin? The gadgets and cabinets and computers all around the cave. She walked the dimly lit railings, lettering her eyes wander, her fingers gently caress. Inspecting it all, nothing too disinteresting for her attention. And the growing certainty in her chest as she catalogued and admired the possessions in the cave—the computer, the cars, the grapnel boosts, the body armor, the capes, the weapons, the datafiles. Everything and anything in this place. It all once belonged to her father . . . and now, it was hers.