Running from the police is easier than movies would have you believe. With the aid of a plan and a lot of previous experience, it was easy to nip into the bank, relieve them of their spare cash, and nip back out again before the police could manage to drive across town to interfere.
They'd taken two cars to the bank. One, with a battered, rusty exterior, was the official henchmen car. The sleek little blue sedan was Sorrow's. Her henchmen were currently loading the sedan's trunk with their moneybags as if they were a fire brigade putting out a house fire with a set of buckets.
Sorrow settled herself in the passenger seat, keeping an eye on her boys with the aid of the side mirrors. The trunk slammed shut as the last of the henchmen headed back to his assigned car. Sammy slid into the driver's seat of Sorrow's car and started it up, guiding them into the flow of traffic with a loud squeal of tires.
Sorrow managed to hold on to her grim dealing-with-subordinates face for a full ten seconds after they'd left the bank before a burst of laughter popped out of her. "Did you see his face when the boys pulled out their guns? Oh, I wish I'd had a camera."
Sammy drove on, silently.
"And that manager! He almost burst a blood vessel watching us take all that cash! Oh, Sammy, that was...Sammy?" she asked, finally noticing his silence. He normally would have been laughing just as hard at the memory of the manager as she had been a moment ago.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Sammy, what's up? You're way too quiet over there."
He sighed and veered to the right. "Boss, you touched that kid."
"Yeah. So?"
"You never did that at a heist before."
"Look, Sammy, we've been over this. I cried on him, didn't I? He'll be fine."
"I'm not worried about him." Sammy sighed again. "Boss, now they know you're...different."
"So what?" Sorrow crossed her feet on the dashboard and examined her gloves. "Y'know how many other...different people there are in this city?"
"Yeah, I know," Sammy grunted. "But differences get you noticed."
"Sammy, I have lived in Gotham for twenty years," Sorrow pointed out. "I was born here. I'm not exactly new, y'know. What are you so worried about?"
"Batman."
"Batman?" Sorrow snorted. "Sammy, I've been pulling jobs for what, three years now? The Batman doesn't bother with me. I'm under his radar."
"Not now, you're not," Sammy muttered. "Now everyone knows about your...your hands."
"They knew before," Sorrow pointed out. "Well, the boys knew, and they're not exactly quiet types."
"But Batman didn't know."
"You're telling me that the Bat actually may have missed something?" She laughed. "And does the sun rise in the west now?"
"Boss, the Batman doesn't like different people," he went on doggedly. "Up 'til now you were just another crook to him. Okay, you had the costume, but costumes aren't anything big, not in this town. But now he knows you've got...powers."
"I do not," she snapped, glaring at her shiny black gloves. "This is not a power. This is an annoyance."
"It's a threat," he snapped back.
"How do you know? What are you, some kind of Bat-expert?"
"I've been working in this town for twenty years," he emphasized, "and I was around when the Bat first started showing up. I'm warning you. He hates people with powers, and he will stick to you like a burr on a dog if you aren't careful."
Sorrow drew her feet back off of the dashboard, suddenly all business. Sammy might not be the brightest guy around, but he had a definite feel for trouble. "Sammy...you really think the Batman might track us down?"
"I wouldn't be sayin' it if it wasn't true."
"Hell," she muttered. She'd just have to come up with a way to deal with him...
Sorrow generally spent her evenings on the roof of her warehouse hideout, watching the river glimmer in the moonlight as she let her thoughts wander. The damp April breeze stirred up the cuffs of her pajamas. She sighed and knocked them back into place with the back of one ungloved hand.
The heist had gone well. She could hear her henchmen down in the warehouse, discussing it and muttering to one another about the possibility of a visit from the Bat-clan. Idly, she wondered if they realized just how well their voices carried through the enormous hole in the roof.
She kicked her dangling feet over the alleyway, watching her heavy black ankle boots swing almost with a life of their own in the chilly spring air. That last job had supplied them with enough cash to live off of for the next six months! Why wasn't she happier about it?
It was lonely, being the leader of a gang. Oh, sure, she had Sammy...but she couldn't really talk to him. He was a good second-in-command, but she couldn't talk to him about anything other than business without feeling weird. He was almost as old as her father would have been! And she couldn't really make friends with any of her henchmen. That would be a terrible idea, first of all - henchmen got ideas and tended to take over when the boss showed them special interest - and anyway, who'd want to hang out with them? Their idea of a really good time was making sure that someone else had a really bad time.
A flash of light in the corner of her eye made her turn her head. The Batsignal reflected brightly off of the dense clouds that covered the sky in opaque gray fluffiness.
The sun hadn't even been down for ten minutes. Without taking her eyes from the circle of light, she slid backward on the roof and got to her feet. Oh, there was certainly a chance that they weren't summoning Batman because of her. It was possible. But then, a sudden rain of frogs was possible too, wasn't it? If the Batman really was coming here...
She whirled around and raced for the little stairway, slapping her bare palm against the wall as she thundered down to the ground level.Wham! Her boots slammed into the half-rotten floor and snapped a chunk of wood off.
Taking a deep breath, she schooled her expression into one of arrogance. Female criminals in this town got zero respect unless they were backed up by a man or unless they were the very personification of bitchiness. Even Catwoman had been forced to occasionally break out the whip and teach certain thugs a lesson about underestimating her. She didn't dare present herself to her henchmen as anything but supremely confident, capable, and cold-hearted.
With the air of a princess sweeping into the throne room, Sorrow burst into the barracks, interrupting a game of poker between a few of her brighter henchmen and a fistfight between a few of the duller ones. "I have reason to believe that the Batman may show tonight," she said. "Prepare at once." The henchmen scattered quickly, abandoning cards and fight without a word. It had only taken two or three henchmen noisily killing themselves before the rest realized that Sorrow's word was absolute law. She permitted herself a tiny quirk of a smile and walked back to her own apartment.
Once her door had clicked shut behind her, she let her arrogant expression dissolve in favor of one that featured a mix of panic and anxiety. She wasn't in costume! She couldn't face him in her pajamas. She yanked them off and swore as she realized she hadn't had her gloves on. Well, so much for those pajamas. That stupid black stuff on her hands stained everything...where were her gloves? She frantically raked the room over with her gaze. One was laying neatly on her pillow. The other was missing. She crammed her right hand into the glove and ferreted through her things, looking for its mate. Clothes and bundles of cash went flying as she tore through her belongings. She finally found it under the bed, curled neatly around a massive dust bunny.
There was no time! He was probably leaving the signal now! She stuffed her left hand into her other glove and wriggled into her costume, cursing as the zipper stuck. Okay. Shoes, costume, gloves...she glanced into the mirror. The wind had whipped her long hair into a series of knots. She grabbed her brush and yanked them out, mumbling invective to herself as her gloves tangled themselves in her hair.
She ran one last check over herself. Makeup! She snatched up the jar of grey makeup and slathered it on as quickly as possible. Did she have time for the rest?...yes, she had to have time, she wasn't about to face the Batman for the first time and not be fully made up! With shaking hands, she inked a tiny blue teardrop on the outside corner of each eye.
There. She was as ready as she could possibly get. With one hand on the doorknob, she summoned up her best Queen of the Universe expression and stalked out into the main room.
The henchmen had vanished, just as they were supposed to. She wished she could have kept them around, just in case, but it was too risky. If things went according to plan and she did actually manage to lay hands on the Batman...well, people with specific, horrible memories tended to loudly relive them after she touched them. She couldn't risk anyone else hanging around to hear Batman's secrets, if he had any.
Sorrow looked around once more, just to be sure that her underlings had gone, and only then did she drop the act. "Sammy?" she called.
Sammy popped up into view. "Over here, boss - dammit," he swore as the knot he was attempting to tie slipped out of place. Sorrow hurried over.
"It'll be ready soon, right?" she asked.
"It's just about ready now," Sammy assured her, tying off the knot with a satisfied "There." He slowly shifted himself up onto his feet and dusted his hands off.
It was the best last-minute plan that she could come up with. She'd seen the other rogues and gangsters being captured on the news. Batman had all sorts of long-distance ways to take people down - nets, bolas, you name it. In order to neutralize him, she had to get him in close.
So, step one was to make it so that he couldn't use the bolas or the net. This explained the presence of three twin beds securely tied together in the middle of the room, and why Sorrow was currently settling herself down on the middle one. Nets and bolas couldn't wrap around three beds, and even if he tried using them, it would be easy to wriggle out from under them if they were unable to wind around themselves behind her.
So, that would get him right up close. She'd have to take care of the rest of it by herself. A spiral of dust floated down from the ceiling.
Someone was on the roof.
"Get out of here," she hissed at Sammy, who obediently raced back to the henchman barracks. Sorrow yanked her gloves off and stuffed them in a crack between beds. Oh, she hoped that this worked...
The first thing that most people noticed about Sorrow's warehouse hideout was the massive amount of boards nailed up over the old, broken windows. Most people, however, were not vigilantes who used the rooftops like their own personal stepping-stones across the city. So instead of boarded-up windows, the first thing that Batman noticed as he landed softly on the rooftop was the enormous gaping hole in the shingles. It was the perfect place to creep up to and peer inside.
And that is why he stayed far away from it. They had to know that a hole that size existed. There was no possible way that it would be unguarded, either by traps or henchmen. So instead, Batman found himself a window that hadn't quite been boarded up the whole way and slithered through it.
It had taken him surprisingly little time to locate her hideout. From the bank's security tapes, he'd been able to identify two of the thugs, and as luck would have it, he'd found them both drinking in the same filthy bar not two blocks from here. He'd only had to break two chairs over them before they started babbling. He was almost disappointed - he'd hoped for a better showing for once.
Oh well. He landed on a little catwalk and crept closer, surveying the warehouse floor. There were no henchmen around, though they'd obviously been there recently. Smoke still curled lazily from an abandoned ashtray on one of the handful of tables in the huge room.
The only signs of life belonged to the young woman laid out neatly on the massive bed in the middle of the floor. Batman eyed it suspiciously. It was unexpected and therefore dangerous. He had to assume it was some kind of weapon, no matter how harmless it looked.
She was sweating through her makeup. A faint smile jerked one corner of his mouth upwards. Good. She was nervous, and nervous meant unreliable. The police and the tapes hadn't been able to reveal much about whatever she'd smeared on that guard. She didn't look like she had any kind of weaponry out now, though. If she had some kind of spray can or something in her sleeves, he could always just redirect it away from himself. Hadn't he had enough practice avoiding the Scarecrow's toxins over the years?
Well, there was no time like the present. He leapt from the catwalk and plummeted toward her, cape flaring dramatically in the low light. She shrieked and tried to sit up, twitching as her boot caught on the hem of her long blue coat. With one mighty pounce, he snagged her by the wrists. He yanked them up, intending to drag her off of the bed. Instead of fighting him, she shoved her hands upward and painlessly slapped the bottom of his chin with a sad little squelching noise.
He glared down at her. His gaze shifted to her hands as she wriggled her fingers...her black-coated fingers...oh, damn it all. He dropped her hands and backed away, scraping madly at the little bit of exposed skin that was covered in whatever toxin she'd smeared on him...and a warm, damp wind was blowing on him now, scented with garbage and the hot, raw smell of blood as he knelt in the grubby alley with his lifeless parents...
The pearls were rolling into the cracks of the pavement and...and no, this wasn't real, this was a memory...and the faint echoes of the fleeing mugger's footsteps were rattling in his ears...no, he wasn't there anymore...and there was a tiny fleck of blood on his sleeve, and he couldn't take his eyes from it...such a bright, cheery red on his white, white sleeve...
With a massive mental shove, he jammed the memories back to their rightful place in the back of his mind. He wasn't a newly orphaned eight-year-old. He was a fully grown adult. He was...tied to a bed? The rough fibers of rope were scratchy on his bare wrists and ankles. So...no gloves, no boots...and his lower back wasn't screaming at him, so no belt either. Well, at least she'd left his pants on...
And the mask! Right, because he was Batman, and he had a secret identity!
He couldn't hear any sounds that would indicate movement. Well, the sooner he made sure he was alone, the sooner he could wriggle out of this indignity.
He opened his eyes. "That was fast," she remarked. He tilted his head to better see her where she sat on the bed next to his.
Sorrow was crying. He felt superior about that for all of two seconds before he realized that he was crying, too. "What did you do?" he snarled, taken off guard for a moment by a wave of embarrassment. Batman did not cry.
"I guess no one told you I was poison," she muttered, patting the last of her tears off of her face with a corner of the blanket that she sat on.
In point of fact, no. No one had told him that. The police had been very ignorant about her, and the henchmen he'd interrogated had somehow let it slip their minds that Sorrow's toxins were biological, not manufactured. He resolved to let them know exactly how irritated he was about that omission the very instant that he turned Sorrow over to the police. Perhaps if they'd been a bit more talkative, he wouldn't currently be pinned down like a tent on a windy day.
Instead of answering, he resorted to the time-honored Bat-glare. It probably lost a little bit of potency since he was currently in a totally nonthreatening pose, but it still made her flinch backward. Well, good. At least something was going according to plan.
"It's not my fault," she protested, fiddling with a glove. Right. Like someone had held a gun to her head and forced her to smear that stuff all over his face. "And anyway, I fixed it, didn't I?" She cocked her head and gave him a little smile. "I could have just let you...y'know. You almost did," she added. "Why do you think I took all your toys away?"
His equipment did not consist of toys. The intensity of the glare rose up a notch. Now it was entering Joker's-got-a-sidekick-as-a-hostage levels.
Sorrow looked away, fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. "Anyway, we've got a problem."
"We?" he asked disbelievingly.
"Yes, we, kemosabe," Sorrow snapped back, still not looking at him. "I need to get out of here without your interference. Now, I could just kill you." She considered her hands for a moment. "Well, you could kill you. You know what I mean. And you'd be dead, and that would be fabulous for all of twelve hours, maybe a whole day if I'm lucky." She finally met his eyes. "And then everyone who ever wanted to be the one to kill you would show up at my door and rip me apart. That is, if the people that love you to pieces hadn't done it first. No, thank you. I can do without a few million people out to kill me." She fussily straightened out a wrinkle in her coat. "So I have to let you go. Not just yet," she snapped, smacking his leg as she noticed his fingers slyly reaching for the knots. Damn.
Why would she possibly want to keep him around longer...oh, no. Oh god, no. Not another monologue. He didn't think he could take another ten-minute explanation of how black was white, how up was down, and how it was perfectly logical and reasonable for her to rob banks and kill people.
He'd heard just about every excuse in the book over the years. Gambling debts, addictions to feed, terrible childhoods...yes, that was probably her story. Most of the other rogues in this city had had bad childhoods. Bane had been born in a prison.The Ventriloquist's mother had been murdered right in front of him, and the Scarecrow...well, the Scarecrow had been nothing but abused by everyone around him until he'd put on his costume.
But instead of starting in on her autobiography, Sorrow glanced at the door to what was presumably her henchmen's barracks. "No, what we're going to do is this. I'm going to leave, and then whenever you get around to untying yourself you can leave. Good? Great. Happy trails." She slid off of the bed and moved out of his line of sight. His fingers immediately started prying at the troublesome little knots on his wrists.
The warehouse door creaked open. "Put your hands up and step away from the door!" The door in question shut with a resounding slam! There was a flurry of footsteps as Sorrow thudded back to his side. "You called the cops?" she hissed.
"No." Well, in point of fact, no, he hadn't...oh, but he'd done his interrogations in that bar, hadn't he? And the bartender looked like the type of guy to report on the things he heard to the media so that he could make a quick buck or two. The media loved getting footage of him, particularly footage of him with a rogue in front of a crowd of humiliated policemen. He redoubled his efforts on the hand farthest from Sorrow.
"Well, then why are they here, Mr. Smarty-Bat?" She bit her lip and looked around frantically. The rope around his wrist started to slip loose. Why wasn't she taking off her gloves and touching him again? Maybe she just hadn't thought of it. Maybe there was still too much antidote in his system for the toxin to work for a while. He fervently hoped that it was the second one. "I'll make you a deal, okay?" she asked.
"I don't deal with criminals."
"The deal is that I'll untie you and you can, um, arrest me...as long as you don't hit me. What?" she asked defensively when his glare turned scornful. "Look, I've seen what you do when you're pissed off. I don't care where I go from here as long as it's not the hospital. Okay?"
A crackly voice boomed from a bullhorn outside. "Step outside with your hands up. We have the building surrounded."
"Look, I know you don't want them coming in here and seeing you like this. Do we have a deal?"
"Untie me," he growled.
"That wasn't a yes."
"You won't get a yes."
"Then maybe you won't get untied!" she snapped, just before she bothered to look down at his wrists. The rope slithered quietly off of one of them as she watched. "Oh, hell." She dove for his feet, wrestling with the knots. "Remember, I'm helping you, and I didn't kill you. Remember how I didn't kill you? See? This is me helping you-"
"Shut up," he growled, kicking free of the untied ropes.
Arkham Asylum ran on a tight schedule. Without order, it was argued, no one would ever get back that sense of normalcy that they had to possess in order to regain their sanity. The inmates needed a regular schedule, one that never varied, one that had been beaten into their heads after only a few weeks of following it.
At the moment, the schedule dictated that the more well-behaved inmates were allowed one final trip to the recreation room before bed. During the daytime, the inmates generally split up and did their own thing. But at night, it was understood that everyone would be quiet while they watched the news on the flickering little television.
It was the one program that everyone could agree on. Not only was it a vital link to the outside, but sometimes it gave them updates on how their friends were doing. Or their enemies, as the case was tonight. The crowd was gathered close, watching a live feed of the Batman taking down a new costumed criminal.
They gazed, silently, like cats watching a mousehole, waiting for a glimpse of either predator or prey. The perky announcer burbled "I'm getting word that-yes, the Batman is leading this one out personally, folks…" The footage blurred and bounced as the cameraman jockeyed for position against a horde of cops. Finally, as the scene stilled, the door to the warehouse flew open and out stepped-
"A girl?" snorted one of the men.
"Do you have a problem with girls?" Poison Ivy's smooth voice purred, indicating that if the speaker currently didn't have any problems, she'd be happy to provide some.
"No," he said hastily, backing up until he was safely hidden in the horde of inmates.
The Arkham crowd leaned closer to the set as the screen flashed a close-up of the girl and the Bat.
"Is he…is he crying?" asked Edward Nygma, stunned.
Before anyone could answer, the camera zoomed in on the Bat. Everyone could clearly see the tears rolling over the cowl and down his cheeks. A hand gloved in shiny black vinyl appeared holding a handkerchief. He gave the owner of the hand a look that would have melted titanium. The camera panned over to reveal the girl in the long blue coat, who shrugged and stowed the handkerchief away in her pocket as Batman melted back into the night. She blew him a kiss, waved to the news cameras, then quietly sat herself in a police van and allowed herself to be taken away.
The news feed changed to an amusing local story on kittens and the Arkham group lost interest. Eddie, however, settled back in his hard wooden chair. No bruises. No blood. And the Batman was crying. Clearly, this was a riddle to be solved as soon as possible.
(to be continued)