Disclaimer: I do not own Batman.
A/N: Hello, everyone! For reference, the story will be more of a mix of the comics and the animated series. The story is also rated T for violence and mature themes.
Thank you for reading!
Her hand burned when it touched the doorknob.
Ten-year-old Bonnie Hatch yelped and shot her hand away. She smelled smoke from the vents before, and she heard a large boom come from somewhere in the apartment building—the sound of an explosion. The building must have been on fire, and Bonnie knew from the hotness of her bedroom's doorknob that the flames were close. Too close to her room.
Bonnie's heart pounded, and she ran to the window. She stumbled when another explosion went off, and her ears picked up the screeching of a woman. Beatrice.
Panicked, Bonnie stood up and bolted for the window. There was a fire escape outside, but she needed to jump over by the next window to get there. She just had to open her window and go, before Beatrice found her.
Bonnie tried. It wouldn't open.
She tried again, but it was still stuck. Bonnie's mind raced, and she looked around the room. If she couldn't open the window, then she had to break it, and anything—a lamp, a book, her ice skates—could do that for her. She spotted her ice skates lying on the floor by a counter with a tiny television mounted on top, but Bonnie caught something else in the corner of her eye. Grey smoke seeped from the bottom of her door.
Bonnie grabbed sheets from her bed and flew for the door. If smoke came in the room, then she would be—
The door slammed into her. Bonnie clutched her nose at the collision, but someone else knocked her down. Orange and yellow flashed across Bonnie's vision, and she looked up to see what pushed her. Bonnie's adoptive mother, Beatrice, was above her, a knife in her hand.
Bonnie scrambled away, but Beatrice was fast. When Bonnie tried to run, her mother crashed into her, and both collapsed on the bed. The gaunt-faced woman was also tougher than she looked, pinning Bonnie's wrist with her nails and holding the knife to the other wrist. Bonnie cried out.
"Finally!" exclaimed Beatrice. Her eyes blinked rapidly from the stinging smoke. "I don't have to deal with this!"
Bonnie had no idea what to say. The television still blared in the background and made it hard to think, and she didn't know what Beatrice meant.
"I have no idea why I bothered to take you," she said, half-laughing, "but you're a failure! And after everything I've done for you, you've just be an ungrateful waste of sp—"
"No!" Bonnie said. She understood at that moment what she was going to do. "No!"
Beatrice was going to kill her. She had hurt her before, but she would have let the fire destroy Bonnie. There wouldn't be a trace of her, any evidence of murder. It would just be Beatrice Hatch alone, Gotham's shining physician mourning her lost child in future news articles.
"Get off!" yelled Bonnie. "Please get off me!"
"Shut up," snarled Beatrice. The knife crawled to Bonnie's neck, but Beatrice still managed to pin both her hands down. "You have no power here."
Bonnie's heart dropped. Fear, sadness, and anger coursed through her, and her eyes darted down to her legs, not covered by her dress. The woman's light outfit somehow didn't catch fire, but her legs were spotted with burns. Incensed, Bonnie coughed on Beatrice's face and rammed her foot into the deepest wound on the woman's leg. Beatrice dropped the knife in surprise and tumbled off her, her hand reaching for the knife. Only this time, Bonnie took the knife, and she slashed it.
Shouting, Beatrice fell off the bed and onto the flames on the ground, which caught onto the sheets that Bonnie didn't take. Bonnie leapt off the bed and to the window before the fire crept up, and sparks flared on the ceiling. Some of the blazes in the room spiraled in the inferno, which was almost beautiful to Bonnie in its destruction. Bonnie heard Beatrice's screams on the floor, but someone was still talking on the small TV, which miraculously hadn't been obliterated yet.
"On a darker note this evening," said the anchorman, "five people were found dead from exposure to the Joker's deadly venom—"
Bonnie heard a mirthful laugh from cable, a contrast to the angry screaming on the floor. Bonnie barely had time to pay attention to the news because she had to escape, but that laugh echoed in her head as she tried to open the window again. Her fingers throbbed touching the hot frame.
In her adrenaline, the girl forced the window upward, and she turned back. The yelling had stopped, but the laughter continued. Bonnie, not known for being cheerful, never understood how the Joker could find reason to laugh, let alone at murder. She definitely didn't feel very happy about it, and she didn't want to think about him, either.
Squinting her eyes at Beatrice one last time, Bonnie climbed out of the window. Once she entered the blue night, she realized that Batman was absent, and she wouldn't feel any comforting reassurance under his cape.
Weeks passed. Bonnie had been found by firemen outside of the building and delivered to the Gotham City Orphanage, but that had been a blur to her. She never told anyone was really happened that night, especially not the psychologist that had checked up on her after the incident. People may have thought she was just traumatized by her mother's death and barely escaping with her life, but that was only the surface of what happened.
The young girl stayed in her room for the weeks that went by, thinking to herself. Everything about her old life had perished in that fire, and Bonnie could have made a new start—only, she didn't feel like she could. The fire stayed with her, and she felt it as it was, terrifying and awe-inspiring.
Beatrice's last words stayed with her, too. It was ironic that Bonnie was the one that took control over the situation when Beatrice said she had no control, but Bonnie didn't feel like she still had that control, either. Instead, she was cooped up in an orphanage by the authorities, and she was going to get adopted, again. There would be another parent with control over her, just like Beatrice had control over her for five years. Bonnie had submitted to being Beatrice's showcase for long enough, acting as someone that made the doctor look better than she already did in her prestigious position. Bonnie had long experienced being pressured by her to be flawless in school, sports, and otherwise, and the girl remembered what happened every time she didn't live up to that—or any time Beatrice wanted to take her anger out in general. No one knew about it, and even the Batman didn't help when there was an inferno that could be seen miles away. Even if anyone knew of Beatrice's behavior in the past, they never acted, and Bonnie was stuck under her heel.
Eventually, Bonnie rationalized how apathetic people seemed, and no matter how much Gotham authorities said they improved the city, it all seemed like a lie. They were hypocrites to the girl, and the first responders that came were too late to save the once pristine building. Batman wasn't the hero everyone claimed he was, either. If anything, he must have wanted power over the city like Beatrice wanted power over her. He beat up criminals and people without a second thought, and yet Gotham kissed his feet. Everyone in the city wanted power over the rest, even if only nature had all of the power. Bonnie may have gotten Beatrice killed that night, but it was the fire that took her.
Bonnie wanted to see that fire again. Even if it almost killed her, it set her free, and she was going to see it again. Whether other people wanted to see it or not.