In the corner of Haly's office was a circle game machine that glowed flashing **GAME OVER** in tacky red. Bruce Wayne gazed at it from the shadows that clung to the beams, motionless as the dust motes danced in the one sliver of sunlight that came through the dirty window. Mister Haly perspired under a gaudy desk lamp below, shaky hands to hand out the oily bills of popcorn and bitter metallic smell of fear. The air was thick with the smell of canvas and despondency.
*Crush the parasite,* the voice insinuated itself into Bruce's mind, colder than the harbor in Gotham on a December night. Not sound; an *empty space* inside his head, crowding out thought, leaving nothing but command. *His flaw rots. Destroy him.*
Bruce didn't blink. He'd practiced taking the cold tide infiltrating him, grounding himself in the body. The gritty texture of the beam under his gloves. The distant *beep-beep-beep* of a circus truck backing up outside. The chill, aching geometry of Haly's slumped shoulders. The man was tucking money into a yellow envelope. Payment to Tony Zucco. Payment for a life in which Dick Grayson's parents plunged through the shadows and a trapeze snapped like a gunshot.
Haly sealed the envelope. His sigh swelled through the cramped office. Bruce shifted.
He slipped up behind Haly, a figure forming from darker form. Haly shrieked, whirling around, sending over a mug of cold coffee. It soaked brown across Zucco's new threat – a skeletal cartoon trapeze performer with a broken framework.
"Jesus!" Haly gasped, palm against his chest. "Who—"
"Don't send it." Bruce was low-keyed, gravel in stone. He didn't require the modulator of the cowl to be suave here; raw, honest Bruce Wayne, overlaid with something worse and infinitely more evil, served well enough as weapon.
Haly blinked, terror in conflict with bewilderment. "Send it? It's… it's protection. You don't understand. Zucco, he…"
"I understand." Bruce drew near, one light casting sharp angles of his face, the hollows below eyes that had seen universes cry. "He threatens your people. Your stars. The Graysons." He understood the coffee-stained threat. The paper felt thin, insignificant. A gnat humming around a hurricane. "He won't touch them."
Haly stared, amazed. "How? He has blocks owned along the docks! His thugs…"
"Are irrelevant." Bruce crushed the drawing in his fist. Pulp. Such as the future Zucco envisioned. The *necessary* one. The one that had borne Robin. The idea flashed – Dick Grayson's shining laugh, a dash of color against the filth of Gotham, a partner… a *distraction*. The cold vision in his mind spat, a wordless rejection colder than any metal. *Solitude is strength. The child is ballast.*
Bruce shoved the photo aside. Concentrate. Haly had to be certain. "Zucco ends tonight. His racket ends tonight. Your circus is safe." He tossed the torn paper onto the desk. "Destroy it. Don't bother with the envelope. Get out and lock up your wagons."
The cold, harsh reality of Bruce's promise cut through Haly's fear. He nodded, speechless, stumbling to comply.
Bruce was already dissolving into the darkness beside the door. The penny arcade machine pulsed **INSERT COIN**. He did not require coins. Tonight he had another form of exchange. Pain. Fear. Silence.
***
The stale beer, cheap cigars, and fish entrails swamped the warehouse Zucco employed as headquarters. Tinny, aggressive jazz sounded from a back office. Bruce drifted in the big room like smoke, skirting tripwires Zucco's men considered ingenious. He saw them with sight that was not sight – quivering strands of tension suspended in the air, the acrid sting of expectation hovering above the two goons playing cards by a pyramid of crates marked "Fragile: Venetian Glass." Illegal guns. Expected.
He did not arrive quietly. Not here. He strode into the patch of dirty yellow light cast by a hung bulb.
"Hey!" One of the men threw down his hand and went for the baseball bat resting against his chair. "Who the hell—"
Bruce was on him. Not a punch. A blur. A hand around the man's wrist, twist, a foul *crack* that sounded louder than the tinny jazz. The man yelped, high and thin, doubling up. His partner leaped, swinging a wild haymaker. Bruce ducked back, moving incredibly swiftly, the fist missing the length of his jaw. He moved into the room of the man, an elbow shattering the solar plexus with brutal effectiveness. Breath exploded from the thug's chest. He doubled over, gasping, and collapsed to the hard concrete floor. There was silence, broken by nothing but the moaning of the first man and the steadily, blithely unaware jazz.
Bruce walked on to the office door. It burst open. Three other men spilt out, roused by the screaming. Bigger. Angrier. Knives glinted. Bruce fought his way through them. One kick crushed a kneecap. One palm slam snapped a jaw sidewise. A forearm parried a stab, bone on metal with a dull ring, before Bruce snapped the wrist shut, spun, and rammed the knife man's own blade into his thigh. Gut sounds filled the air, a jarring counterpoint to the jazz.
The inner office door slammed open. Tony Zucco was there, flushed face distorted with anger, a greasy .45 automatic in a puffy fist. He was not big, but he was brimful of puffed-up menace. Saw his men struggling on the ground. Saw the dark figure standing untouched in the center of the destruction.
"Batman!" Zucco invoked the name like an oath. He brought up the gun. "You think you can come in here? This is my town!"
Bruce said nothing. He just moved toward him. Slowly. Intentionally. The jazz now seemed cheap and mournful.
Zucco squeezed the trigger. The sound of the pistol shot was deafening in the small space. Bruce blinked once. He *shifted*. A flick of the head, a quarter-inch shift. The bullet sliced through the space that had been occupied by his cowl an instant prior, embedding itself in one of the nearby crates. Wood splintered.
Zucco's eyes bulged. He kept shooting. And shooting. Four shots in rapid sequence. Bruce pranced around the shots like water around rocks. He read the arcs before Zucco even managed to get them off – curves of death potential drawn across the air. He moved through them, unharmed, advancing.
Zucco panicked. He flung the useless gun at Bruce's face. Bruce intercepted it in mid-stride without stopping stride. He folded up the metal casing in his hand like tinfoil, the broken gun clattering onto the ground.
"No!" Zucco retreated into his office, digging through the thick metal desk drawer. Likely contained another gun. Or money. For nothing.
Bruce was in the office. He slammed the door closed. The noise was complete. Like the tomb shutting with a clap.
Zucco spun, grabbing a snub-nosed revolver from the drawer. He didn't make it more than halfway up the slide when Bruce's other hand closed over his wrist. Bone scraped on bone. Zucco shrieked, the sound high and frantic, and dropped the weapon.
Bruce shoved him. Not hard. Hard enough to make him stumble into his enormous leather chair. It creaked under his bulk. Zucco grasped his wrist, whimpering, looking up at the unyielding figure standing above him. The icy presence in Bruce's mind swelled, a wave of glacial satisfaction. *See his fear. Savor it. It is power.*
Bruce leaned forward, both gloved hands on the desk, holding Zucco in place. The cheap wood creaked. He didn't need the lenses of the cowl to see the object fear in Zucco's eyes, the sweat bead on his forehead, the frantic pulse jumping in his throat. He could *feel* it radiating off him, thick and stifling. Zucco's fear was not psychological; it was a thing he could feel, a burden in the air, a smell metallic and acrid beneath the fish and cigars. Bruce sketched it in. Made him bright-eyed. Sharp-nosed.
"Haly's Circus," Bruce told him, his voice low and flat and without inflection, but with the hardness of a judge's gavel. "You will forget it exists. Your boys will forget it exists. You protection racket is finished. Tonight."
Zucco attempted to bully, his voice cracking. "You… you can't just… Do you know who is backing me? Falcone—"
"Falcone is irrelevant." Bruce interrupted him. The name meant nothing against the giant, impersonal universe that was mumuring in his ear. Bugs were the little kings of Gotham. "Your supporters are irrelevant. Your threats are irrelevant." He leaned in close, the vacant gaze of the cowl inches from Zucco's sweaty face. "You are irrelevant."
The fear was at its height. Bruce almost *saw* it emanating around Zucco, a black aura. He felt the presence within him stir, hunter to prey. Cold whisper: *Make him understand. Make him bleed understanding.*
Bruce did not need the voice. He was too accustomed to pedagogy of pain. His hand flashed out, quicker than Zucco could blink. No punch. A grip. Metal bands of fingers closed around Zucco's jaw, yanking his head back, laying his throat wide open. Zucco gagged, bulging eyes, a strangled gasp ripped from him.
"You terrorized children, Zucco," Bruce snarled, his voice lowering to a gravel-pit whisper that ripped raw nerves. He felt the man's terrified heart pounding against the back of his hand. "You schemed murder for acrobats. For a boy." Dick Grayson's possible orphaned eyes flared again in his mind. Bright. Hungry. Unnecessary. The cold form hissed in assent. Bruce's fingers contracted infinitesimally. Zucco moaned. "That future is extinct. You die in Blackgate. Your operation dissolves. Tonight."
He let go of Zucco's jaw. The man groaned forward, gasping, rubbing his battered face, sweat and tears mingling. Bruce stood up. He took out a thin device from his belt – no Bat-communicator, burner phone. He entered one number – Gordon's direct number. He did not say a word. He just pressed send, and the open line carried the screams of the whimpering men and the gurgled gasps of Zucco. He hit another button. A compressed digital package – bank accounts, vulnerable communications, manifests to transport contraband firearms – flowed silently through the cyber arteries of Gotham to Gordon's computer in the GCPD tower.
Bruce turned away from the shaking building in the chair and walked for the office door. Zucco's voice came back behind him, raged and desperate. "You.. you think you've won? You stopped me? You just... you just ruined that kid's life! His parents. They're lost without me! They'll become reckless! They'll fall!"
Bruce stood in the doorway. He didn't turn around. The words hit, not as accusation, but as verification. *Yes. I killed Robin before he was born.* The coldness in him emanated profound approbation. A distraction-free world. A Gotham molded entirely by *his* will.
He pushed the door open. Outside, the cries of vanquished thugs were receding. Sirens moaned in the distance, closing. Gordon was effective.
Bruce moved into the dim peripheries beside the loading bay doors of the warehouse. He observed silently as the initial GCPD cruisers arrived before them, red and blue lights flashing, lighting up the atmosphere. Gordon got out, trench coat billowing, face stern, surveying the carnage – the groaning men, the broken crate, the twisted gun on the ground. He bellowed orders. Police flooded in.
Bruce watched as Gordon walked deliberately toward Zucco's office. He observed from the open doorway as the moment he recognized Zucco collapsed forward over his chair. Gordon's hand moved involuntarily to his holster before easing a little as he realized Zucco was unarmed and beaten. A faint nod of grim satisfaction crossed his face. The evidence Bruce had sent would be flooding Gordon's screens this instant. Ironclad. Case closed.
The entire debacle had been so mind-bogglingly easy. Effective. Efficient. No flailing acrobats. No stunned boy turned orphan. No dazzling sideshow zipping through the Batcave. Only... silence. Purpose. The cold in Bruce thrummed, a still vibration of enduring satisfaction. *Solitude. Concentration. Power.*
Bruce dissolved into deeper shades beside the loading bay doors. He did not disappear in a puff of smoke. He merely... stopped existing. One second Gordon looked in the direction of the shadows, furrowing his brow as if he felt someone there. The next blink, it was gone. Nothing but a vacant spot of blackness and the far-off screams of sirens echoing through the Gotham concrete canyons.
The Batcave drew him home in its familiar litany: the gentle thrum of the mainframe, the constant drip-drip-drip of a stalactite in darkness, the scent of ozone and damp stone. The Pennyworth crest, illuminated, loomed in the cavern wall. Below it, Alfred stood like a statue beside the shining Batcomputer console, his face a mask of courtesy. Page Monroe stood facing the console itself, her posture deliberately relaxed, arms folded over her breasts, an incongruous counterpoint to Alfred's self-control. Her black eyes followed Bruce as he advanced toward them, shedding the cowl. Her eyes were bright, measuring, guarded – the telltale spasm of his jaw, the stretching immobility of his movements, the faint, lingering bite of cordite and terror that clung to his jacket.
Alfred replied first, his tone the very essence of clipped British restraint. "Master Bruce. Welcome home. GCPD radio reports showed a... successful operation at the docks." He stood there, his eyes narrowing microscopically. "Are you quite all right, sir?"
Bruce hurled the cowl over onto a workbench. The movement was smooth, efficient. He raked his damp hair. "Fine, Alfred." His voice was flat, expressionless. The cold within him matched the mood. *Fine. Equilibrium. Unencumbered.*
Alfred's eyebrow trembled barely at all. He knew the term 'fine' to be a lie thicker than the mist of Gotham. But he also knew provoking Bruce only got him nowhere. He inclined his head infinitesimally. "Very good, sir. I shall fetch some refreshments." He stepped away, his footsteps clicking precisely upon the polished cave floor, into the elevator that led him up to the manor.
Silence fell, heavy and suffocating. The only sound the throb of the computer and the drip-drip-drip. Page stood away from the console, folding out her arms. She paced two steps towards Bruce, closing the distance. She didn't reach out to him. Not yet. She examined him, pausing on the row of taut shoulders under the dark kevlar armor.
"Successful?" she repeated Alfred's term, but she spoke differently. Lower. Softer. Heavy with unanswered questions. "Gordon sounded... pleased. Reported Zucco went down like wet paper. Reported the evidence was still whole." She shifted her head, her dark hair scraping against her shoulder. "He also reported Zucco was talking about rescuing some boy? About doomed parents?" Her eyes met Bruce's. There were deep pools, reflecting the cave's chill light, seeing too much. "What did you rescue him from, Bruce?"
Bruce's eyes met hers. He saw the flash of insight, the sharp intelligence piercing his groomed facade. He could prevaricate. With panache. Invent some other danger. But the cold presence curled inside him, covetous, territorial. *She desires knowledge. Provide diversion.* The creature's demands were uncomplicated, undeniable. They vibrated deep in Bruce's belly, a slow building warmth beneath the frozen mask.
He did not reply. He turned. Slow. Intentional. His gloved hand, still tainted with cordite and warehouse grime, encircled her cheek. His thumb brushed the border of her mouth. His body heat over her warm silk skin, cool leather on warmer flesh. He felt the hitch in her breathing, saw a fraction of dilation in her eyes. The hardness in her eyes eased, replaced by a flash of something else. Something darker. Something warmer.
"Irrelevant," Bruce breathed softly, his voice falling to a raw rasp that brushed against her nerves. He pushed closer, his body exuding warmth in the face of the damp chill of the cave. His smell – sweat, leather, ozone, and the residual, creepy hint of someone else's fear – enveloped her. "Tonight... tonight was about getting rid of a parasite." His other arm wrapped around her middle, holding her to him. The rigid ridges of his chest armor buried themselves in her soft body. He could feel the heat emanating from her belly, a jarring contrast to the cold of the cave. "Gotham is cleaner."
Page searched his eyes. The gobbledygook lie dangled, but the poison in Bruce's eyes, the raw, living tension simmering through him, could not be denied. It was not victory she saw. It was... the finishline. A scaring sort of stillness. And beneath it, a hunger that was almost as great as the one burning low in her own stomach. The queries regarding lost parents vanished, pushed aside by the overwhelming, destruction-pulling power of the man who grasped her.
"Cleaner?" she panted, her own voice now hardly more than a breath. Her hand went up, hesitantly resting upon his chest, feeling the sharp muscle beneath the steel. "Do you feel clean?"
Bruce's eyes narrowed. The icy presence washed over him, combining with his own growing desire. *Show her.* It was not a sigh; it was an imperative that ran through his marrow. He leaned his head to one side, his lips grazing the rim of her ear. His breath was warm on her skin. "I feel… centered." His hand around her waist moved lower, following the curve of her hip in a claiming motion. "Unencumbered." His mouth trailed along her jaw, leaving a fiery path. "Stronger."
He kissed her then, a quick, claiming kiss that stole her breath away. It wasn't soft. It was demanding. Claiming. A bald statement of power he had exerted this evening, directed into this instant. Page's breath came on his mouth, her hesitation vanishing as swiftly as it had arisen. Her fingers tangled in his hair, drawing him closer, her body curving to his. The kiss intensified, hot and ravenous, with overtones of desperation and relief and something else, something nastier and older and colder that thrummed below Bruce's epidermis. She had a taste of honey and coffee, a bitter, essential antidote to the metallic sting which still hung over him.