I don't own DC. I do own this AU and its subsequent world-building, as much as anyone can own something built on someone else's work.
Brutus is bowed out of camp by the troupemaster, who seems eager for Brutus to spend as little time in the vicinity of the young pickpocket as possible. He seems quite worried, almost twitchy in a way that has Brutus resolving to do some research. This seems beyond what he would expect from a simple theft operation. Normally The Bat would deal with the pick-pocketing, but with a killer of women stalking the Eastern Quarter he does not have the time. Hopefully no one else will catch the child. Traveling performers are tolerated only so long as nothing goes amiss.
"Sir." Alfredos says in a low tone as they approach the carriage, the women distracted momentarily by a little girl dancing for coins, "Shall we deliver the ladies first or send them home from the villa?"
"Send them home." Brutus replies, mind already racing to plan the most efficient way to get some work done. "That way I can repay them for their troubles."
"Very well, sir." Alfredos inclines his head and mounts the box-seat with far more agility than his age would suggest him capable of.
The drive to the townhouse passes quickly and they have scarcely arrived but Brutus is bowing Gaiana and Rufina off in a smaller carriage driven by a groom that will not be so noticeable delivering them back to their guild house. It would be a poor payment if they are robbed of the emerald brooch and garnet-studded bronze headdress he had bestowed upon them.
Alfredos sighs as he makes straight for the staircase that will take him to his rooms. "I suppose there is no persuading you to rest instead, My Lord."
They both know the answer to that. Alfredos does not expect a verbal response and Brutus does not give one.
-JLA-JLA-JLA-
The townhouse is not the one that his mother had brought to the House Varius as part of her dowry. The Varius villa is larger and closer to the outskirts than that. It has none of his accoutrements to operate as The Bat, there being too great a chance that it might be stumbled upon by one of the servants or slaves, wards or no wards.
So instead he locks himself in his chambers to go over what he knows of the killer. If his predictions are correct, he will strike again before the week is up. It is unlikely Brutus will be able to apprehend him before then but every one of the young women killed haunts him along with everyone else he has ever failed to save.
Sometimes he can swear he even hears their voices, accusing him of his failures and shortcomings, joining the throng of others, all the way back to his parents.
He is still pouring over maps and records when Alfredos comes though the servants' passage to tell him it is time to prepare for the masque. Reluctantly, he sets it all aside, promising himself and the five victims that he will return as soon as possible. It still feels like a betrayal.
-JLA-JLA-JLA-
He arrives at the Caelini river-side villa rather unfashionably late, a woman on each arm, already giving the appearance of intoxication. He puts off greeting his grandmother as long as he can without completely ignoring all sense of propriety. Eventually he could no longer pretend to brush off her disapproving frowns and approaches her dais. His uncles are mingling with the guests and their wives, his aunts, are seated on either side of the Caelinii matriarch.
"Honored Grandmother." Brutus waves flippantly at the guild-women accompanying him. "Have you met these ladies?"
"Grandson." Elisheva's frown deepens but she says nothing else and, after a long, awkward pause, Brutus excuses himself and allows one of the women to pull him out into the courtyard gardens to mingle. (and establish his presence.) He collects a bowl of wine from an attending slave as they pass.
At one point, he finds himself alone beneath an off-season rose trellis in one of the outer gardens with a half-empty wine-bowl and the taste of perfumed oils on his lips.
"Prince Varius, imagine finding you out here."
In the darkness, Brutus feels the corners of his mouth turn up for some reason and makes sure to purse his lips into a determined frown before pasting on a vapid grin.
"The fair Selene!" He beamed at the woman who had slunk out of the shadows as smoothly as the Cat she became at night. "Your presence is a joy unlooked for! The moon itself is not worthy to shine upon your beauty."
He drops a kiss in the air above her hand. Selene smiles at him, one eyebrow raised in amusement at his over-the-top flattery and Brutus has the sudden thought that he prefers the genuine smiles she gives The Bat across the rooftops. More mischief, less seduction - though there is that as well.
"And what is the most famous carouser in the Islands doing out here all alone?" she purrs.
"I shall tell you," Brutus smirks mischievously. "If you tell me what the most bewitchingly lovely woman in the Islands is doing alone in the dark?" Likely preparing to either steal something or make off with something already stolen. Or maybe not. Selene chooses her targets carefully, thus allowing herself continued entry into the noble classes she preys upon.
She gives a light laugh as fake as his smile. As far as she knows, Brutus Varius is just another mark, no different from any of the other lords and princes present.
Brutus does not understand why that bothers him.
"But I am not alone. Not anymore." She winks flirtatiously.
A quiet cough alerts them to Alfredos' arrival. "Prince Varius, they are ready for you, if you please to come."
Brutus gives his brightest smile and offers Selene his arm. "Shall we? The masque promises to be quite a diverting spectacle."
Selena smiles back, her green-gold eyes glinting as brightly as her headdress in the torchlight. "I have heard wondrous things of Helios' flyers."
"I have seen them," Brutus says more quietly as they begin the walk back to the courtyard, Alfredos a silent shadow behind them. "They could not be lighter had they wings."
They came around the corner and into the courtyard, brightly illuminated by torches and charmed light-stones. The guests are gathering around the edges of the courtyard, mostly clustered around Lady Elisheva's dais and the chairs provided for the Heads of the Houses.
As Brutus sweeps across the pavement with Selene by his side he sees Octavius Copus surrounded by young, bejeweled, uncomfortable guild-women. Further down, just past the remaining five High Houses Isodorus Drakon and his wife Junia, a cousin of Brutus', sit side by side. Their child, barely more than a babe in his nurse's arm's stands by with a solemn face and wide blue eyes affixed on the glittering figures of Helios' troupe. He does not so much as lean against the grip the attending nursemaid has upon his hand but his yearning to be closer is plain to see. Tatius Ennius, Brutus' childhood friend and, similarly, the last surviving member of his House, sits alone and silent, on the edge of the High Houses.
Brutus settles into his chair, directly to the right of his grandmother's dais. "Would you join me?" He smiles brightly at Selene as he lifts his hand for more wine. "I hear that an exceptionally dashing lord will be participating."
"Well then I suppose I had best go searching for such a man. I shall let you know when I find him."
"Oh!" Brutus claps a hand over his hear. "I am wounded, Fair One. Truly."
Selene laughs, her clear tones deeper than those of most women, and settles herself smoothly onto the bench beside him.
"Lords, ladies, princes, and gentle folk!" Helios booms from the center of the courtyard in a grand voice. "I present to you, many wonders from the far corners of the world, brought here before you this first night of Solstice!"
There are a few tumbling acts to warm the audience up before the masque itself proceeds. Brutus had not bothered to read the script that Alfredos had left on his table, these sorts of things are all the same, some great tale of adventure, structured to flatter the patron (in this case Brutus) usually by casting them in some minor but prolific role. It turns out that this masque is a fantastical retelling of the earliest days of settlement in the Islands and Brutus finds himself transfixed despite himself as the troupe's mummers and tumblers portray the refugees struggling to survive against the evil spirits and beings that inhabit the Darkness.
A guild-woman on his other side actually jumps with a squeak of alarm when the little pick-pocketing flyer makes a grand entrance from on high, wrapped in shadowy dark gauzes.
It appears that Brutus will actually be portraying his own ancestor in this little tableau and one of the female tumblers, dressed in rags far too brightly-colored for any true desperate settler, falls before him as if pleading before leading him by the hand to the center of the courtyard. Now all Brutus has to do is stand there as a crowd of "settlers" greet him with faux joy as their deliverer.
He stands, and looks, at the painted faces portraying hope and relief and finds his breath strangles in his throat. Up high, atop the villa walls, the flyers are gathering, scattered around the perimeter, ready to bring about the grand last moment, grasping onto their long ropes and scarves, and all Brutus can think is that the Darkness has not been defeated. That he lives among men and women who lie to themselves and refuse to see the ravaging predator stalking at their heels and that he is not enough. Not enough to save them.
With a burst of flutes and drums the torches blaze high and suddenly it is as if Brutus stands in the center of one of the great may-poles of the Metros Empire as six bright figures dance through the air around him, the flames reflecting off their cheap adornments. If he concentrates he can almost make out the individual characteristics that separate one from another. The little pick-pocket is easiest, no more than half-size of the smaller of the two women. One woman's hair streams behind her, a curtain of jet-black silk and the other's dark-brown curls are pinned up, she is trailed instead by a blood-red ribbon wrapped around one ankle.
The men are near impossible to tell apart, identical skin and the same dark hair but one moves with more anger than the other, the bridled power of a tiger held on a leash. The other puts Brutus in mind of a hunting eagle, knowing his own strength and biding the time to use it.
The elder boy looks fair to be as strongly built as the slightly larger of two men, the tiger. But now he moves with the lean grace of youth, his shoulders less broad and his movements less assertive though no less confident.
And the youngest...he flies.
The torches dim almost to embers, the six of them land lightly, rolling to their feet and vanishing into the shadows, and all Brutus can think is that he cannot remember the last time he saw so much joy.
-JLA-JLA-JLA-
Some hours later, The Bat crouches on the rooftop of one of the lesser guild-houses of the Eastern Quarter, watching the street below. The hunting grounds of the killer he seeks have no discernible pattern, but he seems to stick to the less reputable streets. None of his victims thus far have been the sorts of guild-women who keep the company of great lords or adorn the arms of Council members. No, each of the girls (for they were little more, barely of marriageable age most of them) had come from guild-houses such as the one he now stood upon, known only as "The House of the Green Bird" for the decrepit parrot the bawd, an harsh and bitter woman of middling age, kept out front.
A light click of silver claws and, for the second time of the night, Selene or The Cat rather, slips up beside him. "Imagine seeing you here." Her usual purr does not hide the tang of bitterness in her voice. "If you are looking to harass the women you might find better sport with me."
"I suspect." The Bat interrupts her, not looking away from the street and the women standing and sitting outside their houses. "That I am here for much the same reason as you, Cat."
The Cat pulls back a little bit and gives him a contemplative look over the black silk scarf bound over the lower part of her face. Her claws tap a rhythm against the fabric of her tight-fit trousers. "You hunt the killer." She says. Not a hint of the seductress in her tone. "Why?"
Brutus wishes he dared look away from the street for a minute so that he could do more than glance at her out of the corner of his eyes. Even for him, Selene is unpredictable. "I told you. This city, this Island. They are mine to protect."
"Usually," The Cat drapes herself over the roof so that she is sprawled alongside him, Brutus is suddenly very aware of the press of her shoulder-blades against the back of her tunic. "When most powerful men claim to protect something, they do not mean to include places such as this."
Beneath her dismissiveness there is a weariness and wariness in her tone and The Bat decides that his suspicion she had come from one of the guild-houses was likely correct. It fit with her determination to protect the women and youths of the Quarter and how she had come from nowhere and yet knew how best to flatter each man or woman of the nobility she encountered. One of the middling houses then. Not respectable enough that she would have actually worked the villas, but not so irrespectable that she would never have heard tales of the Houses and their entourages. Personal tales.
"I am not most men." He says into the silence that seems to permeate the rooftop above the barely-there bustle of the night-time Quarter below and she hums a purr in response.
"I am beginning to think so." Her slanted eyes blink lazily at him before she too turns to watching the goings on beneath. "I often wondered what you did when you were not locked in combat with...him. Or pursuing me across the rooftops." Her smile reveals the bright glint of her teeth. "I might almost be jealous."
The Bat stifles a sigh before it can escape him and hauls himself to his feet. "There are five women dead already-"
"Seven." she says softly. "Only five that most know about, but there were seven."
He does look at her fully now. "When?"
She straightens sinuously to sit across from him and Brutus feels her mood shift, more serious than he has ever seen her. "I'm guessing you know of the last five, even the Guard know of them. But the first kill I have been able to track was eight moon-lives ago, Tala, a girl who worked down by the docks. She was a slave-girl belonging to one of the net-makers, he would sometimes rent her out to sailors and fishermen mostly. It was very messy, like the son of a diseased swine had never killed before and likely had not planned even to kill her." A slight movement beneath her face-cloth makes The Bat think she is snarling. "The second was one of the orphan girls who lived down by the Low Bridge. I haven't been able to find much about her, those children do not talk to anyone, even to me, but I saw the body. He was still learning how to kill, but his taste for blood was strong. That was six moon-lives ago."
The Bat nods, adding the new information to what he already knows. "And it has been five since Delia from the red flower house was found. Still messy, but the kind of carnage that was more intentional than not."
The Cat inclines her head and runs the back of one clawed hand over the dark braids pinned like a crown tightly around her head. "Yes. And each kill since has become more and more deliberate."
"He is getting better and building confidence." The Bat says grimly.
As if summoned, a scream, quickly-cut off, rings briefly across the rooftops from several streets over. The Bat doesn't have to look to know that the Cat is right beside him as he leaps.
Notes:
I'm going to take a moment and explain something that I am sure I will get questions about otherwise. When Bruce/Brutus describes Junia/Janet as "a cousin of his" he is using a more archaic meaning for the word "cousin" than we do today. It basically means "related in some way, close enough to be significant and acknowledged but not necessarily close."
Technically, I think they are second cousins (I'd have to check the family trees I drew up to be sure) but that is not a term used in this culture. Thus, cousin.
Also, somehow this became something of a case fic. I regret nothing. (Yet)
Please review and let me know what you think! With polite words, please.