Chapter Five
Lieutenant Rebecca Mulcahey hurried nervously along Crime Alley, her coat lapels turned up to hide her face. It was a cold, wintry night, and she'd received a tip from one of her anonymous sources. It was time to go to ground.
As she hurried along to the agreed upon safe house, she wondered how she'd been rumbled. That idiot Corrigan? No, he was dead. She sighed, hugging her coat closer to her, her eyes scanning the desolate back-streets nervously. Something must have come up.
She noted the sign of the Black Masque. She was almost there. An exclusive night-club, it was where she was to go when she received the signal. Just a few more yards and she'd be safe. No one could touch her there. Not even the GCPD would dare cross the club's infamous owner.
Suddenly, there was a noise. Mulcahey yelped, despite herself, spinning around. Seeing nothing, she began to relax. A cat maybe? This part of Gotham was notoriously seedy. Something tickled at the back of her mind, but she squashed it.
As she came up to the door, readying her ID for admittance, she allowed herself to slow down, relaxing more. She cast her mind back, several years, to the fateful arrangement that had put her in this position to begin with. It was all that asshole Jim's fault, she knew. If she hadn't walked in on him receiving orders from one of the Mask's top enforcers, she'd never have been dragged into this mess.
Though, she thought with a cruel smile, the perks of the position had more than made up for the inconvenience. Well, at least until the Joker came. Then her position had gotten very complicated.
As she stepped up, showing her ID with trembling fingers to the trench coated bouncer, she shivered. It was getting colder, she knew. Snow, perhaps? She looked up at the sky, seeing the grey clouds approaching. It was going to be a cold, wet winter probably. She waited, her arm still outstretched.
Suddenly she felt something cold and hard wrap around her arm, making a loud metallic snap. She yelped, and looked back at the bouncer. Only it wasn't a bouncer, or even a he.
In front of her was a woman with a blank face, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, just flesh. The strange figure wore a fedora and a navy blue trench coat, black hair tied back along the faceless woman's neck. Though she had no visible eyes, Rebecca could tell that she was looking right at her. A pair of hand-cuffs now linked them together.
Rebecca screamed.
"Shut up. I'm taking you in, Mulcahey." A familiar voice said, slight mouth movements under the tight flesh-coloured mask.
"You can't do that! Don't you know who I work for? Whose club you're standing in front of? He has friends! Powerful friends! No one in the GCPD can touch him!" She babbled, fear gripping her heart.
The faceless woman looked at her, and somehow Rebecca knew that the figure was smiling.
"I didn't say I was arresting you, Mulcahey. Now be quiet. You'll find out it's me who...asks the questions around here." The figure's voice was full of maniac glee.
"You're coming with me, and you're going to answer for what you and Corrigan did to fuck us over."
Mulcahey began to object, but suddenly the masked woman reached forward with her other arm, and pressed a chloroform-soaked rag against Rebecca's mouth. As she faded into unconsciousness, she wondered where she had heard that voice before...
The Question worked swiftly, loading the knocked out renegade cop into the back of a rented u-haul van. She glanced briefly up at the club. Five minutes earlier, she'd arranged for there to be a huge ruckus inside, calling all the real bouncers away. She'd effortlessly taken over, and shooed all the other visitors away until Mulcahey arrived. The Question grinned to herself. Finally, she had the means to get the answers she wanted. And, if they weren't the ones she wanted to hear, she'd get Revenge.
The van sped away, into the cold night.
The grandfather clock continued its slow tick in the fading silence.
Barbara's heart thudded, filling her ears with a thundering counterpoint.
Tick.
Boom.
Tock.
Boom.
Tick.
Boom.
Tock.
Thomas Wayne simply watched her impassively, his hollow, steely eyes boring into her, waiting for her to react.
She swallowed, and her brain began to reboot. Wildly firing neurons bypassed the obvious, and shoved a strangely astute observation into her mouth before she could override it with common sense.
"That's impossible. He and the Dark Knight were seen together multiple times."
Thomas Wayne allowed himself another tight-lipped smile, as sweat beaded on Barbara's brow. She felt herself paralysed with shock. She was frightened that she was going to burst into laughter, and never stop.
This has to be a dream. A messed up, crazy dream.
"Very perceptive of you, Miss Gordon. But what I said is true. James Gordon was the Dark Knight. I did not say that the Dark Knight was only one man."
Now Barbara was really confused. "Wait, what?"
Thomas leaned back into his chair, sighing wearily. "It's very simple, miss Gordon. The Dark Knight wears a mask does he not? A champion of the people. He could be many people. Dozens even, and no one would much know the difference. How else would anyone know?"
Barbara struggled to grasp the enormity of what she was being told. It was...she frowned, a spark randomly bouncing in her head. It –was- bullshit.
"No. You don't have an army of Dark Knights. At most there could only ever have been two." She said with sudden clarity and conviction.
"Oh? What makes you say that?"
"Many reasons. But the simplest is that I wouldn't be here if you could recruit anyone. The other Dark Knight is Bruce Wayne, isn't it?" She said, once again firing into the blackness.
A slight twitch of Thomas's eye. She grinned fully, so hard it almost hurt, and she stopped. She hadn't felt this happy since...well, since before her father had died.
"A lucky guess." He allowed. "Alas, my son is no longer...fit to be the Dark Knight. And until recently, neither were you. James made me promise not to make you aware of our little endeavour without his permission, or before you were sixteen. You turned sixteen several months ago, but I judged you were not fit for conversation at that time. I was going to wait till you were eighteen before making a final decision on whether you would ever be ready, but seeing you at the Anniversary..."
Thomas sighed. "You looked half-dead, Miss Gordon. I don't mean to offend you, and you did look perfectly lovely, but anyone could see you were holding on to life by the fingernails."
"Nonetheless..." he continued. "You are the daughter of James Gordon. The fire in your eyes convinced me. If nothing else, you deserve to know the truth."
She let out a deep sigh. She hadn't come here expecting anything like this, or even wanting anything but the truth in the first place. So why did her pulse quicken, her mind race, her stomach flutter at the idea starting to bloom within her?
Was it really that simple? Could her months of agony, anger, despair. Was it really so easy to plant such a strange seed of hope within her?
She shook her head. No, this -was- crazy. It was nice to have some sense of closure, but that was all it was. The past could offer her nothing.
"Closure...I want to know the truth, . And then let that be the end of it."
Thomas Wayne nodded, and began to speak. The clock continued to tick and the old-lights flickered, a wind began to rattle the windows from outside.
"Seventeen years ago, just before you were born, a crime happened. It was a simple mugging, a desperate thug with a revolver and more hate than sense. Three victims, one overbold with youth, rushed forward to bite the thugs arm. The revolver went off, three times. It killed one of the victims, and wounded the boy in his head and his heart. The third victim stood frozen in anguish." Thomas's voice was cold and sepulchral.
"Such a crime would have passed unnoticed, no doubt. A thousand stories like it are told every-day, in Gotham City alone. But the survivor of the senseless attack was no ordinary victim. He was a billionaire, with all the world's wealth and resources. His rage and grief were terrible to behold. He wanted to save them both, but it was already too late. So great was his guilt, he turned away from the other survivor, unable to face the living, constant reminder of his failure."
Thomas cleared his throat, his eyes staring straight ahead, no longer seeing Barbara, but seeing through her, to a distant point in time.
"He did not know how to heal, how to adapt. Others would have let such a storm roll over them, accepted their losses, and moved on. But the billionaire believed himself special, above all others, better than God. If he could not bring her back, he would see those who took her from him burn."
He paused, and turned away, closing his eyes for a moment. He shed no tears. He continued after a few seconds, in the same deadpan tone as before.
"Then there came an Angel, of sorts. Another survivor who raged at the world. His first partner; murdered in front of him as a warning. The thug responsible both times had been more than a grunt; he was a rising force in Gotham's pre-eminent crime syndicate of the time. Both the billionaire and the newcomer hated this syndicate, the Falcones. They wanted justice, they wanted revenge, but neither of them alone could obtain it."
"So they came together, and forged an insane plan. It wasn't enough merely to find and kill the thug, to avenge the death of their...partners. They hated the evil that had birthed the thug, and they swore to take what measures they could to eradicate such evil from the city they loved."
Barbara breathed, enraptured by the tale, finding it surreal and distant, like a fairytale. Yet she found that, despite her misgivings, these events were deeply pertinent to her in the here and now. A thousand questions were born and died in her mind. She did not want to interrupt the old man, who had her spellbound.
"We swore that we would never sink to the same level. That our revenge would be pure, and tempered with justice. That we would never use guns, never kill, nor allow others to come to harm by our inaction." Thomas shifted tenses with ease, the flow of the story barely affected. Perhaps this part of the story was easier for him to tell as himself.
"We decided on the mantle and moniker of the Grey Ghost, a series that inspired me as a child. It was Jim who suggested the additions of the gas mask and the armour. He knew how dangerous the streets could be. He also knew that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and that Fear would be our most potent weapon of all."
He offered her a drink. Barbara barely noticed, and swallowed the glass of water in one long gulp, her eyes fixated on the old man, eager for him to continue.
"It was hard, to begin with. I tried donning the mantle myself, in the early days, but I lacked the skill, the temperament. I would don it again later, but by then the reputation had been established, and I needed only serve as a quiet guardian, the threat of swift and terrible justice.
Your father was always the true Dark Knight. In the early days and beyond, he had the determination, the skill, and the power to make an impact. By day he worked relentlessly on uncovering leads, his network of friends and informants within the GCPD growing. By night he pounded the streets, attacking and eliminating the most vile and public crimes first, but gradually working his way inwards, burrowing into the nests of iniquity, seeking out and destroying their queens.
But I think...I think it took its toll on him. He grew tired of the war, of the endless sea of filth. He...missed you, and his wife, and then his second wife. He hung up his cowl for good when you turned nine, and by that time there was someone else who could patrol the night in his place.
My son, Bruce Wayne. It is...not my place to speak of him, or his part in the tale. Suffice to say, he never truly replaced your father in the role, not in my eyes."
Barbara felt her senses reeling; memories long repressed or buried suddenly surfacing with a fury. Everything began to make sense now. Things she'd ignored or overlooked. Things that a child takes for granted. She had always assumed her father was simply a tireless detective. She could never have imagined that his crime-fighting would well...involve so much actual fighting.
She remembered her ninth birthday. Her father had been there. She realised with shock that that had been the first time he had been present at a birthday or special event that she could remember. She searched in vain, but in all earlier memories her father had only ever been there in the dawn or the latest evening. She remembered the fedora, the reinforced metal brim, which he had brought home for her one time, a curiosity he had called it. She remembered finding strange balls in his jacket-pocket, and realising now they were gas grenades. The angry shouting that made up so much of her father and mother's and stepmother's time suddenly made much more sense.
He wasn't just an overworked, job-obsessed detective. He was one who worked beyond the law, though never above it, to ensure justice was done.
"What...What happened next?" She asked shakily, a dread certainty creeping up on her, but unable to avoid the trajectory of the tale, incapable of ending the story before it had finished.
Thomas looked at her with real sorrow in his eyes. The tears he had not been able to shed over his own tragedy, he now seemed able- or willing- to show for her own.
"The Joker happened." He paused, gauging whether he should continue. Finally, reluctantly, he did so.
"We...I...still don't know where he came from, or who he really was. Nearest I can tell, the syndicates were sick and tired of being squeezed. They'd been all but decimated, and all their regular contacts were terrified of the Caped Crusader. Every hit man they had hired either refused to follow through or failed utterly. They'd done everything they could, infiltrated the GCPD, broken out hundreds of convicts from Blackgate, anything and everything to ruin and destroy and demoralise the Dark Knight.
But then as if from nowhere, the clown came. I don't think they could have fully realised what they were doing. They opened Pandora's Box. They gave the clown everything he asked for, money, men, weapons, access to materials and contacts forged over a lifetime. An entire city's criminal underworld came together, united in their fear of the Grey Ghost.
To fight Order, they had unleashed pure madness."
Wayne shuddered. "It must be...it must be going to snow soon. Damn November." He muttered unconvincingly.
"I...won't pain you more. God knows you probably know what the Joker was like better than I do. Suffice to say, my son proved insufficient to the task. Though your stepmother begged him not to, your father donned the cowl again."
Thomas's face hardened.
"Someone betrayed your father, and you. I don't know who. Chances are the Joker killed them too when he was finished with them. But someone gave up your father's identity to the Joker, and he in turn hijacked that school bus with you on it. Your father...came closer that day to breaking our vow that day than any when else. For all I know, he did break it in the end. Though I have no right to say this, I hope he sent that monster screaming back to hell."
Barbara sat there, unmoving. It was quite the story, and it had stirred her in a way she hadn't anticipated. So much she had assumed was now uncertain. Yet, struggling for clarity, she had to ask one last question.
"Is that the end of the story?" She asked, ever so quietly, looking at him, trying to read those old, tired, haunted eyes.
"I know what you are asking. Maybe you are hoping. You are your father's daughter, Barbara. Perhaps you may find yourself continuing this story, or starting your own."
Barbara shivered, suddenly cold. So, he was considering her, still, for this Dark Knight role. It seemed fantastical. Dress up and beat up on criminals? She could barely beat up a full three-course meal.
"If I wasn't a Gordon, would I be here?"
Wayne smiled. "Do you want to be here?"
Barbara was about to respond when there was a rap on the door. Patricia had returned, Alfred behind her, looking distinctly ruffled.
"Sorry I was away so long, dear. How was your chat with Mr. Wayne?" She looked at Barbara with intent concern.
Barbara looked up at her wearily, returning to her exhausted, automatic state. But the seed of fire within her still burned. What she had heard gave her a lot to think about. Her earlier amateur cyber-detective work had paid off in spades. Though her recovery was still uncertain, she had a new fixation to fill her mind. She'd learned about the Dark Knight, about her father, about the past. Now it seemed Wayne was possibly offering her a future in such a role.
It was impossible. Absurd. Dangerous. Frightening. But it was something to think about.
"Thank you for talking with me for so long, Mr. Wayne. I'll talk to you about...the University you wanted me to go to again soon." She lied, for Patricia's benefit.
Thomas nodded, responding in kind with perfect smoothness. "A pleasure as always, Miss Gordon. Take your time. You need to be strong in body and mind if you want to attend University someday." He said with a twinkle in his eye.
As they headed back to the car and the long drive home, Alfred trying in vain to persuade them to stay the night. But Patricia was determined. Although she seemed to have quickly grown fond of the old English butler, she had a charge in her care, and would not be swayed from her duty. Though, she had agreed to take home several exquisite bottles of Chardonnay as a gift from the Wayne's cellar.
Barbara wandered about in the cold night air, looking up at the full moon, her breath now coming out in visible puffs. Rubbing her arms to keep warm, she noticed a single, lone bat flying across the moon's shadow.
A vampire coming home to roost? She smiled inwardly at the mental image. It had been a surreal evening, full of Gothic ambience and an extraordinary story. And it seemed the story was not quite over.
Now all she had to decide was if this was a horror story, or was going to be quite something else.