Chapter 1: Sweethearts
A petite redhead moved through the Gotham night. Her eyes shot around, her satchel tucked tight to her hip with a clenched fist. She worried a scarred bottom lip and strode with too-quick steps down a rain slickened street.
She was right to be tense. Two pairs of smiling eyes watched her not from the shadows, but from an open area of the street two blocks ahead. And why would they hide in the shadows? From what did they have to be afraid? The girl tucked hair behind her ears, straining to hear what horrors may come, oblivious to the horrors already in the works. Gotham was full of sheep and wolves, sharks and fish, predator and prey, and not much in between. Everything about the redhead from her short stature to her tense posture echoed to the two men that she was the prey they were so impatiently awaiting.
"You would think little girls would have learned to stay inside at this time of night, wouldn't you?" one of the wolves commented as the redhead took notice of them, squared her hunched shoulders, and scurried to the other side of the street. She didn't know it was too late. She had no idea how thoroughly her presence on this quiet side street had doomed her. Her head barely cleared the roof of the sedans she darted in-between.
The other wolf smiled because he liked it when they ran, in fact that's why he chose not to surprise his prey. He pictured what the girl may look like under the long-line brown coat she wore and understood why she might want to run. She could never match their strength and though she now had her hand dipped into her purse fishing surely for a can of pepper spray, she would only serve to piss one of them off. She was close now, albeit on the other side of the street. He could see her eyes widen as he wiggled his fingers at her, "They know what their doing. They're the only animal in the world that wants to be chased," he said with a grin.
"Aw man, why'd you have to say that? That kinda ruins it for me."
Her gut got heavy when they started to follow her, her pace quickening. She fought to keep her breath from coming out in gasps.
"She's not the brightest one," the shorter wolf ribbed loudly after she shot them an edgy look while ducking around a corner into a smaller alley. This close, she could see that both of the men were rather handsome. Surely, they could find willing women to satisfy them. But they aren't interested in the willing.
They rounded the corner to find the girl jogging towards the red door at the end of the alley. The sound of her slapping footsteps on the wet concrete seemed to excite her pursuants. Larger footfalls mirrored her own and hastened their descent upon her.
Her fumbling fingers found the door handle. She jiggled it, but the door remained stoically still, the cold metal barring her from escape.
"Hey, sweetie," a happy voice greeted from behind her, "settle a bet for me and my buddy."
To his surprise and disappointment, she didn't react when she heard slower footsteps draw closer. Her pale hand was still perched on the door handle, her back stiff but still turned.
"Do you walk around at night alone like this because you secretly want to get snatched up or because you really think you stand a chance?"
Silence.
"Does some part of you love that anyone could do anything to you and you couldn't do shit to stop it?"
She turned around. The wolf addressing her assumed, awaited, a pair of wide eyes and maybe shaky hands to rise up against him when she turned. Instead, her eyes were piercing though her posture was suddenly relaxed. She leaned against the door, arms crossed.
"You think women want this?"
He smiled again as he stepped forward to tower over her, endeared by her attempt at bravado, "You knew what would happen if you stepped outside in Gotham alone at night and you stepped outside anyway. It's like someone walking into traffic and saying they didn't want to get hit."
She looked at the man up and down. She let her purse strap fall off of her shoulder and into her hand. She held the purse aloft, nearly touching the man's chest with their proximity.
"Take it, then."
The second man chuckled as the first man ripped away her purse and tossed it to the side with a violent clatter, "We don't want your purse, sweetheart."
Now, she was the one smiling, "Then what do you want?"
"Judging by that shit-eating grin, you know exactly what we want and my guess is you want us to take it."
Her attention snapped the larger of the two, the man closer to her now. He had long curly light hair, lots of stubble, a slightly crooked nose. He looked like the white-collar type – not the usual Narrows street urchin – and he had clearly done this before. She supposed perverts came in all shapes and sizes. There was no hesitation to him, only anticipation. He placed a hand on the wall next to her head and leaned over her. His other hand moved up towards her waist.
She moved faster than he could have ever expected. She grabbed his extended fingers and twisted them harshly away from her. He grunted at the sudden curl of pain from his hand before he felt another bout of pain to his throat. He stumbled back, hands flying to his neck instinctively to nurse the injured area.
The bitch hit me.
As he hacked, still recovering from the blow, the world came into focus in the form of the sounds of a brawl above him. He opened tearing eyes to see the redhead twisted in the grip of his companion, her face grimacing as she felt his arm tighten around her neck from behind. She shrieked a strangled scream before aiming an elbow into his chest and snapping her head back hard into his nose.
He expected the redhead to try to run once she shook off her attacker. Instead, she stabbed her knee into his midsection again and again while he pushed with extended arms against her shoulders. She was relentless, wild, letting out vicious little screams between blows with her hair flying all over her heart-shaped face. He was backed into a wall and slowly sliding down it as he curled into himself to splint his injured stomach. She finished her barrage with one last solid crack right to the nose.
Just as the first wolf was stumbling to stand straight, she flipped around to match his height. The look in her eyes was excited.
He wheezed, "You think you're safe because you took some women's self-defense class? Come here, sweetie, we can fight if you want to fight."
"Does talking tough make you feel like a big scary man?" She laughed, carefree, showing all of her teeth behind her scarred lips.
He wound back, giving her plenty of time to react before he launched his fist forward. She pulled him in the direction of his punch, landing him face first into the wall on the other side of the alley. He scrambled to stand up only to catch an elbow to the face. Another blow landed, he couldn't tell from what part of her it came.
He was only half-conscious of her small fingers gripping a handful of his hair. Her warm breath fell enthusiastically across his cheek as she hissed, "You're right. I did know what would happen if I stepped out of my house tonight. I knew you or someone like you would see me and think I was their victim for the evening. And I knew that it would be another opportunity to show another one of you sick crazy fucks that you can be prey, too."
The redhead slammed the man's head into the wall again, letting him slump the rest of the way to ground.
She straightened with heaving breath and stood over the restfully sleeping bodies of the two men. She took small steps towards her purse and plucked it from the grimy ground. She sifted through the contents until she found the cold hard handle of a small handgun and she exhaled with relief. She shouldered the bag and retraced her steps back the way she came, this time going the complete opposite direction as before, her intention for the night fulfilled after several other encounters with similar characters. She was lucky this time, she didn't have a single bruise or scratch to speak of, unlike other nights. Lucky, or I'm getting better at this. Maybe, on my way home, another -
"Blaze," a voice sliced through her good mood in an instant.
The interjection came from behind her. Her step faltered. The voice was instantly recognizable to her. She plastered a pleasant smile on her face before revolving to face a very serious Blake looking rather handsome in a dark jacket and shirt.
"You scared me! I was just coming home."
At this, my Blake raised a brow, "I came home early from work and you were gone. I've been looking everywhere for you. What the fuck are you doing in this part of town?"
I neared him, placing my palms on his wide chest, "I heard people yelling over here from a couple blocks away and I came to break it up, that's all. I saved a very nice old lady's handbag – I'm pretty sure it was vintage."
He stared down at me with serious eyes, "Blaze."
"What?"
He tilted his head forward exasperatedly and spoke in a hurried hushed tone, "You don't have any of your gear and you're alone. You could have been killed, or worse."
I huffed, turning on my heel and heading back towards home. Even as close as we were to one another, I could barely hear his footsteps shadow mine. Though he trained me as he was trained, I was never able to accomplish the same silky silent steps.
"It's almost like you love the danger of being out on your own. Are you really so bored with our fights as a team that you have to risk your life brawling with creeps in alleys?"
I felt my cheeks heat and my eyes fixed forward. His tone made me feel like a scorned child, "Our fights together are far from boring – you know that."
"Then why?" his tone began to raise.
"Why else? When bad things happen under our noses and we had the power to stop them – the bad things are our fault. Shitty people aren't going to wait to do shitty things until you're home from your day job."
A pause. "Is that really why you're out here tonight?"
"Yes."
He exhaled. "What were they doing?"
"Who?"
"Those men you beat up in the alley – why did you take them down?"
I finally looked over at him, "I told you about the granny's purse."
His smile was wry. I could almost see foes I'd beaten to a pulp flash through his eyes, "You don't flatten dudes like that for trying to steal purses."
I paused our descent through the city with a touch to his arm. I turned him to face me and kissed him squarely, "Look, as much as I love being a crime fighting duo with you and taking down mob bosses and bank robbers and cyber criminals… guys like those guys in the alley aren't going to reveal themselves to anyone but a girl walking alone at night. And they're not going to come after me if I look like I'm ready for war in all black military-grade armor, okay?"
Hurt flashed across his face and he looked down, "This is about him, isn't it?" On the rare occasion he came up, Blake never wanted to say his name. "Doesn't it terrify you, having these men try to do that to you again?"
I tilted his chin up, but he still wouldn't meet my gaze. "Some part of me is terrified – yes. And it's not just about The Joker," I forced myself to say it, "It's about all of them - all of the rapists that have hurt me and a million other women. Right now, in this city, it's happening. If I didn't go out tonight, it would have happened to another girl. It makes me sick inside, thinking that every night I don't put the fear of god in these assholes is another night that someone else is hurt."
"You've come out here other nights?"
I huffed again, turning away and starting to walk again, but this time wrapping his big hand in mine, "You're missing the point."
He rubbed his eyes, "Blaze, the point is that it only takes one asshole to catch you off guard, one wrong hit, one more guy than you can handle, and you could get hurt. I wouldn't even know where to find you. As much as I know you're not the helpless trouble magnet you used to be – we're both still vulnerable on our own."
"I carry my gun and knives."
"But you let these guys chase you down alleys, where no one will hear you scream if they – "
"Blake, I'm sorry. I think about it every day, how heavily my past weighs on you. But this is my way of coping with what happened. It brings me…," I paused, considering if I should say the truth or another white lie. The truth came out of its own accord, "joy doing this. That they'll think twice before they follow another girl down another alley. It makes me feel like this – this insanity was all for a greater purpose."
His hand was gripping mine now, as tight as ever, as we slipped down the subway stairs. I could tell he was stressed, his breathing was heavy and he only looked at me out of the corner of his eye briefly as he spoke, "I'm glad you feel like what happened was for a purpose, I really am. And I'm not going to be that overprotective husband. But the idea of something else happening to you and these men looking at you like that…"
I smiled grimly at him as we ducked into a sparsely-populated subway car and gripped the handrails, "My rapists are dead. I'm sure there's trouble on our path ahead, but nothing can be as bad as we've faced so far, right?"
He slunk closer to me, something unquiet stirring in his eyes. His musky smell enveloping me. He placed a hard kiss to my forehead and a strong arm around my shoulder, "With you, I never know."
The subway started forward and I peered at our joined reflection in the darkened subway window. No one could have guessed that this young (and stylish, thanks to the endowment of a certain Mr. Wayne) couple were the black-clad heroes saving Gotham one piece of shit at a time.
I felt the world fill in around us. There was a young woman in a hot pink coat and long braided hair sitting on the other end of our cabin, watching something on her cellphone that played aloud. She looked so defenseless sitting all alone. Was I imagining that she looked scared?
I was considering that I might have saved her tonight when I began to heard the video playing on her cell phone, "…miraculously back in Gotham after apparently coming back from the dead," my head straightened from its resting position on Blake's shoulder, "the terrorist, who was widely thought to have been murdered years ago, was allegedly seen on the docks of the Gotham harbor accompanied by masked men earlier today, " I looked Blake, who was listening as well, white-faced, "The group was heavily armed and believed to be at large at this time. No word yet on whether The Joker – "
My heart went cold, my ears rang. The whole world fell away again as I looked back at our petrified reflection in the subway window, so different from our restful silhouette moments before.
This is impossible.