The Falcone family being arrested was meant to be a victory. The champagne corks popped in Gotham's high society had been suddenly silenced, their wrists had been shackled, their elegant clothes crumpled, before were shoved into police cars.
Batman watched from a distance, and the Darkest Knight hummed in his mind like a second heartbeat, telling him that it was only the start of it all. It was so easy for Batman to break into the party, as the Falcones had become so confident in their power, so that the appearance of a Batman in their dining room brought the sound of wine glasses shattering against the marble floor. But there was no celebration after the raid like Bruce had expected.
There was no celebration because the whole city of Gotham had been ill for so long that without any fever, it didn't know what to do anymore, so it just stood there without knowing what to do. There was literally no crime, except for a few stray incidents, such as the occasional junkie trying to get high or some petty thief who didn't get the news that Gotham was no longer their home.
The rooftop of the Gotham City Police Department was cool to the touch, but no wind blew as it should do on a rooftop in the city full of motion and movement, as if the whole city had stopped and considered what was going on. Batman landed gracefully across the rooftop as his cape fell upon the stone surface like dark ink, and Gordon didn't look back when a shadow covered him on the rooftop.
"I thought you'd be here sooner," Gordon said, his voice filled with annoyance but his fingers tightened their grip on the thermos of coffee he took up from the bottom floor, steam rising from the cup and filling the air. "After cleaning up this city, I would've thought you'd have nothing on schedule." It was almost a laugh, Bruce thought, he took deep breaths through his nose.
He held his belt as he leaned against the rooftop wall as Gordon stood close beside him. There was something strange about the whole city, as it wasn't loud and chaotic as usual, no gun shots and no sirens, just the sound of cars passing like white noise. "I didn't come here to brag," Bruce said.
"I came here to tell you that this might be the last time we do this."
There was a pause, then a sigh, but Gordon kept his grip on the thermos as before, though he tried to control the look on his face. Their friendship was lasted about two years yet it was more than enough. "Bullshit," Gordon said, and it wasn't doubt. He was stubborn like usual. "It isn't up to you when to retire, Batman. Not in Gotham."
Bruce looked past the horizon, where the sun was beginning to peek over the city. In the back of his head, the Darkest Knight was telling him how inevitable it was, how fleeting such peace is. Bruce ignored the thought. "It is done," he said. That was all. It really was finished, there was nothing left. "There will be no crime and no monsters."
Gordon fumbled with the thermos; his coffee had long since gone cold but he didn't notice. He stared directly at Bruce.
"You really think it's over? Done?" he asked. He sounded so tired and confused that it would have shaken a weaker man to the ground. Bruce didn't answer right away; he let silence fill in the space between them, full of meaning. Full of all those times in the past years, when the Bat would appear on the rooftops and Gordon would come and talk to him until the sunrise. The way the Commissioner never saw Bruce as an anomaly but as a partner. Bruce then pulled a glass out of the depths of his cape.
Gordon's office was the only place that Bruce had seen him drinking from a glass. The Commissioner just stared at the glass for a moment longer and then he burst out laughing. "You are such a sap," he muttered, although he didn't have to. He unscrewed the cap of his thermos which no longer held coffee, and poured himself a generous measure of whiskey before passing it towards the masked man.
Bruce could smell the alcohol from the other side. The two of them held their glasses in silence for a bit until Gordon was the first to move.
"To Gotham," the Commissioner offered, clinking the flask towards Batman.
Bruce joined him. It stung a bit to swallow the whiskey but you could always say that that is how you know you are alive.
The Commissioner's eyes were glistening a little and even Bruce could see it but they didn't say anything about it. "And then? What do we do from now on?" the Commissioner asked, after he cleared his throat and covered it up by brushing his mustache. Bruce turned the now-empty glass in his hands as the morning rays shone through it, making the crystal sparkle like a jewel.
"Now…" he began, slowly and deliberately, "we make sure it remains that way." He did not explain further, unable to, without introducing the concept of a cosmic awareness and universal knowledge that lived at the back of his head like a secondary heartbeat, but the Commissioner nodded once, briskly, as if he comprehended more than Bruce had said. Maybe he did.
* * *
Sunlight glimmered on Page Monroe's hair like spun gold. She didn't recoil, at least not at the glare.
Bruce watched her kneeling in the grounds of his Garden, seeding bare-hands, no long razor-fanged manicure, no long, painted nails filed to an arrow-tip. The scars on her wrists were pale now, fading into the topography of her skin. It was fitting: Calendar Girl was dead, Gotham was healed, and she healed too. The Darkest Knight stirred in his skull, its voice a low hum like the vibration of a tuning fork pressed against bone. Page was a sign.
A sign of change. Of something not ending, but beginning.
He knew what it meant, what he meant to do. For all its healing, Gotham was only one universe. The Darkest Knight told him it knew of the pain in so many others, the countless cries, the bloodshed on countless faces; of worlds where monsters roamed like men and preyed on the innocent as they fed their appetites for violence and cruelty. And Bruce had always listened.
As if she'd sensed him, Page stood, dusting dirt from the knees of her pants, and turned to Bruce. She was smiling now.
Small, perhaps, but real. No longer the grim smirk, the smile of a villain. Bruce stepped into the sunlight.
The Darkest Knight roared in him, its pleasure warm and deep and aching in his belly. Bruce looked good in a suit that was tailored to his frame, not quite the armor he'd worn before, but something that was dark and formal; the kind of suit that you wore to meetings, or to boardrooms. The difference was thin, but Bruce felt it, felt it deep in his bones. "Stalking is a bad habit, Wayne," Page said, and Bruce strode up to her, suit jacket dark against the afternoon sky.
"Gardening is a new look on you," Bruce said. Page threw a clump of dirt at him in response and it missed by inches, but the gesture was playful, easy.
Two years ago, she'd have thrown a knife instead. "You coming in, or are you gonna stand there all afternoon?" Page gestured towards the greenhouse at the end of the garden, wiping the dirt on her her jeans, with no silk dress and designer outfit, before Bruce followed without hesitation into the dark, humid space.
His purpose settled on his shoulders, heavy as a cape. It felt, he thought, almost like the first cape he'd worn. The Darkest Knight roared in him as he walked into the dark, humid space. It was the smell of fresh earth, a scent beneath it, like lemon verbena, or perhaps just citrus.
Bruce took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sweet, life-giving smell of the place instead of the stink of death, and the Darkest Knight's voices receded until they were just the background noise of the dripping faucet and the leaves rustling.
Page walked ahead, making footprints in the soft, muddy earth between the growing rows, and reached out to touch the leaves of an olive sapling as she passed. "You aren't here to look at the garden," she said without turning to face him. "Get to the point."
Bruce wiggled his fingers. There were no gauntlets to protect his fists, only his bare hand. "Gotham is clean," he said. "But it's not enough."
Page stopped next to a trellis covered in flowering wisteria, her back still to him. "Clean," she repeated. "Clean?"
"It's a start." Bruce moved closer, seeing the way her shoulders tightened, not in surprise, but in acknowledgement. "I can do more. I have to."
She finally turned, her eyes clear and sharp. The knives weren't quite in her mouth anymore though; her voice wasn't as jagged. "Define more," she said. "Because last I checked, you don't sleep, you don't eat, and Gotham's streets are so quiet that there are funerals being held for the rats in the gutter." Her expression twitched, as if she'd just made a joke, but it was only at the corners of her mouth. "What's left?"
Bruce breathed, a single sharp exhalation. Across his chest, the Darkest Knight's voice roiled, giving him the coordinates of worlds where a city's streets burned until everyone was dead, or where the first word a child learned to say was "murder." He tried not to let those images stain his memory. "There are other Gothams," he said quietly. "Other people like you."
Page stopped for a moment. Rain dripped slowly from the greenhouse's roof, falling onto her collarbone. She didn't wipe it away. "And you're just gonna.... collect them?" she asked, her voice incredulous. "Like stray cats?"
"Like survivors," he said. It tasted of blood and honey. "Gotham's structure is intact. Arkham Asylum is empty, the whole place stripped of its sickness. We have space."
"Oh my god," she said. "You really do sound like a cult leader." But her hand was shaking around the wood slats of the trellis, her grip turning her knuckles white. She knew, of course she knew; the tremor in her hand gave it away.
Bruce closed the distance between them, close enough to notice the traces of Calendar Girl's lipstick on the edge of her mouth, and to watch as she once again bit through the color. "You were the first," he said. "Not the last."
###
The grandfather clock in Wayne Manor's study was striking as though a metronome, and each tick of the clock was slicing the air like a scalpel across skin. Alfred stood next to the fireplace, cleaning a silver tray as he would almost anything, no matter what, no matter if the world was coming to an end, no matter if Bruce had returned just now, first thing in the morning, with multiversal coordinates burning in the corners of his brain, and the faint scent of whiskey still fresh on his breath.
Alfred did not turn as Bruce entered the room, but his shoulders straightened under his suit, ever so slightly.
"Master Bruce," Alfred said, his voice clean and sharp, like the silver in his hands. "You're tracking mud on the rug."
Bruce looked down at his boots, which were still damp with dampness from the greenhouse. He did not apologize.
He simply walked the length of the room in just three long strides, casting a long shadow across the polished wooden floorboards, and sank into the armchair by the fireplace. Firelight caught the outline of Bruce's face and made sharp the shadow of his nose, the dark hollows of his eyes, the bags beneath them. He looked like a man, thought Alfred, who had spent so long in the dark that the dark had begun to stare back.
"Gotham is clean," said Bruce, his voice hoarse with disuse.
"So I've heard," answered Alfred, putting the tray to one side. He did not ask the question he knew Bruce wasn't going to answer: So why do you look like a starving man?
Because he knew it, because he had seen Bruce in with that face at ten years old after the funeral, at fourteen when he had been a boy just learning how to punch someone until their fist made contact with bone, the look of hunger had grown inside him and it had started to gnaw on the empty parts of him. Alfred looked at Bruce then, and his eyes were cold and piercing and he peeled back the layers of Bruce, so he could see clearly: Gotham was the beginning. The Darkest Knight had whsipered there is more.
Bruce exhaled sharply through his nose, the faint smell of gunpowder and Earl Grey tea tasting like nothing but copper on his tongue. "It isn't enough," he admitted, his fingers flexing, bare and without gloves or armor, only the calluses years of batarangs and broken bones had given him. "There are other cities, other dimensions."
Alfred did not move his expression, only tightened his grip on the polishing rag. "I see," he said. He folded the rag neatly into thirds, as if tucking away a very important secret. "So you have decided to liberate them, then?"
"I can't walk away from them." The words were rough and unpolished, where Bruce had spent years learning how to lie, whereas Alfred had grown so good at noticing the lies.
"I suppose not," said Alfred, barely louder than the grandfather clock. "That you can't walk away." He went over to the cabinet and poured two fingers of scotch into a crystal tumbler, the one Thomas had favored over the years, and without a word he handed it to Bruce. "You're going to need some allies."
Bruce took the glass and felt the weight of it in his palm, a good, heavy anchor. "I've got them, don't I?"
"Soldiers," Alfred said, his mouth turning into a thin line. "There is a difference." He did not finish the thought, did not say: You've got me, because he knew Bruce understood that better than anyone.
Bruce downed the drink in a single gulp, the alcohol a welcome heat down the line of his throat. "I know what I'm asking."
"Do you?" Alfred said, though he said it gently and with a touch of pity, though it was pity he had never been afraid to show, in the end. "You don't come to me because I'm going to pack you a picnic, do you, Master Bruce? You come to me so that I can watch you carve yourself into pieces, then hand you out to strangers."
Bruce placed the glass down. "I'm coming back."
Alfred's smile was as tight as a piece of leather. "Naturally," he said. He stepped forward, reaching out to straighten Bruce's collar with the same care and attention with which he had polished the silver. His hands were strong, steady, but his eyes were old. "Just remember: hunger is a compass that points the way home. If you let it starve long enough, it will consume you first."
The Darkest Knight purred deep down inside his chest, murmured, yes, yes, yes. Bruce did not contradict him.
"I will make preparations in the cave, sir," Alfred said, smoothing his waistcoat. "War will not come lightly to the Batcave," he said, though the meaning was there all the same.
Bruce nodded once, briskly, as he might to a briefing. "Thank you, Alfred."
His eyes were clear, but his voice cracked like old leather. "Don't thank me yet. Dinner will be served at eight."
Bruce watched him go, the grandfather clock ticking in the spaces in-between them, and the Darkest Knight purred through his head, a warm, dark thing wrapping its claws around his spine. Soon, it whispered. Soon.
And Bruce flexed his fingers, feeling the lack of the leather on his knuckles, and the bare skin beneath them.
Soon.
* * *
The elevator doors opened, silent and seamless. Bruce stepped out in a navy suit, sharp and proper, without any armor, without any cape. He looked exactly like the billionaire son he was, dressed like a master of business as well. The woman manning the front desk stared up at him in surprise. She had clearly been expecting anyone but him, since she jumped to her feet. "M-Mr. Wayne," she stammered, "we weren't expecting you for some time."
"A man is known by his surprises," Bruce said, offering a pleasant grin which did not reach his eyes. As he strode past her desk, his dress shoes clacking, the air smelling of corporate coffee and fresh disinfectant, he heard the other employees whisper behind him. Falcones? The Falcones are gone, I heard. They say that Batman... He ignored them and continued his stride. In his head, he heard the steady beat of the Darkest Knight, which was now beating in time with his own pulse. The Knight spoke into his skull, and so he could barely hear himself. The people of Gotham will not understand, he said. They will only follow.
In his glass office, Lucius Fox was looking out the huge window at the skyline as the last rays of light began to fade. He held a cup of some pungent herbal drink in his right hand and an iPad in his left. He did not turn around as Bruce came in, yet his shoulders tensed. "What can I do for you, Mr. Wayne?" he asked without turning. "Run out of places to sit and brood at the office?"
Bruce closed the door behind him. "We need to talk."
"Talk," Lucius said, his tone not asking for the details, not asking if this was another financial scandal, but stating the obvious.
Bruce blew through his nose, smelling the lingering herbal taste of Lucius' tea.
"It's a clean slate," he said.
Lucius raised an eyebrow. "A clean slate," he echoed, tasting the sentiment and finding it wanting. "Clean as in crime-free?" he asked. "Because I still see you paying the security at the lobby."
Bruce didn't answer. Instead, he put his hand into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and, with a nonchalant gesture familiar to anyone who had ever handled a handgun, without the gun in question being any different from a weapon in appearance, he pulled out a small, black data drive. He placed it on the desk in front of him. Lucius stared. Bruce waited until the other man reached for it with a fumble, then withdrew his hand to sit down.
"And that is...?" Lucius asked, though he already knew. Bruce had been handing Lucius the prototypes of gadgets for years now.
"The next phase," Bruce said.
The Darkest Knight nodded in his brain in approval.
Lucius grunted like a man hearing a particularly preposterous proposal and took the drive, inspecting it. "You need to be a little more specific." Lucius turned on his computer. "Because 'next phase' can mean everything from bulletproof clothes for the boys at your party."
A few seconds later, the screen was full of blueprints and schematics, the information coming so fast that the human eye had no way of tracking. Lucius leaned forward.
"I'm saying it." He swallowed hard. "Bruce... these are multiversal markers." He shook his head. "That's theoretical physics. This is... this is not the Research and Development Department."
"This is necessary."
Bruce didn't move to look over Lucius' shoulder. There were blueprints on the screen for a way to cross dimensions; stabilizers that could handle the dimensional breach; and clothes that could protect you from the cold, howling dark of the space between worlds.
Lucius' hand trembled. Only once. Then he gripped his fists on top of the desk.
"You're serious."
He made a statement, not a question. Bruce remained silent; there was no need to respond.
Lucius pushed away from the desk, the rolling of his chair barely covering the space of half-a-second as he stood up and began pacing. His gait was deliberate, stiff movements leading up to the window. He looked out at Gotham. There were no more rats in humans skin. There were no longer children walking in the shadows to be frightened by them.
"Gotham's clean," Lucius said, using the same word Bruce had. "And you're not satisfied."
Bruce flexed his fingers in a way he normally could only do with his gauntlets.
"Are you?" He asked.
Lucius turned around then. His face was in shadows; half of it was dark.
"No," Lucius replied, "but god, Bruce, other worlds? Are you really planning on destroying reality as we know it? Are you really about to step through a portal to places that we were never meant to see?"
Bruce didn't blink.
"Someone has to."
Lucius chuckled in disbelief. "And it has to be you?"
"Yes."
The Darkest Knight hummed in agreement.
Lucius looked into his eyes. It was intense, piercing eyes that could see through you to the muscle and bones. Lucius sighed, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.
"You're crazy," He said, but there was no heat behind it. "Absolutely, certifiably insane," He dropped back into his chair, pulling the keyboard toward him with renewed purpose. "How fast do you need this?"
Bruce almost chuckled. Lucius was typing furiously.
"Yesterday."
"Of course." Lucius continued typing without looking up. "You'll have it, but Bruce..." He paused, his eyes glancing to meet with Bruce's. "Don't make me regret this."
Bruce didn't say anything, just nodded at him.
"Good," He said, "Now get out. I've got work to do."
As Bruce walked out of the room, he felt a weight between the shoulder blades. The Darkest Knight purred inside of him, and it felt very satisfied as the sensation wrapped around his spine. It whispered in his ear,
"Soon."
Bruce flexed his fingers without his gauntlets.
"Soon."