Batman
Batman
There were usual suspects when there was “a disturbance at Arkham Asylum.” More people would have broken out than broken in, both generally speaking and right now in particular. Because right now in particular, the Joker was in there. Batman and quite a few other people would very much prefer to keep it that way.
Guards swarmed the exterior of Arkham like ants around a disturbed nest. They were sticking close to the building, a formation which implied an internal disturbance rather than a successful escape. The first thing Arkham’s security did in cases like these was check the rooms. If someone was missing, they would know. Generally speaking. There were always exceptions, particularly in Gotham.
Batman swept closer to the building, but never got much closer than the outskirts. Broken branches from a bush, would have been picked up by the groundskeeping crew if the mess had been there during the day. Torn grass, could have been there longer, but the freshness of the upturned dirt implied it hadn’t been.
The guards were treating this like a disturbance. There was evidence pointing towards an escape. Not a good combination. He could have approached the building. Found Aaron Cash, asked questions. Instead, Batman followed the path of disturbed plant life and dirt away from Arkham. There were no dead-giveaway footprints, nothing to suggest the size of the wood-be escapee past “human-sized.” Less helpful than “obviously not human-sized” would have been.
The trail was subdued, but not truly hidden. It implied a degree of caution combined with a fast pace. It led away from Arkham, towards the city, but not too far, as it turned out. The half-hidden trail led to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of what could be considered Asylum grounds. He really should have these things torn down, but no one really wanted to live or start a business near Arkham, and he couldn’t blame them. Abandoned warehouses like these dotted Gotham, quite often to be found still under the ownership of someone who liked leaving them as abandoned warehouses instead of say, legitimate businesses. Broken windows, boarded over and broken again. A shred of dark cloth and a small streak of fresh blood on an exposed nail.
Yeah. This was the place.
The inside of the warehouse rang with silence. Broken glass scattered across the floor, glinting dangerously in the refracted moonlight. Old needles and older blood. Silent and dark as death. Until—
It barely counted as a sound. Muted breath and a quiet whimper, echoing at a distance. It could have been a dog, if not the low, choked sob that followed. He followed the sound into a metal-encased room that had probably once been an office before the building became a monument to failed business. A rusted door hung loosely on broken hinges.
Hm.
Alright.
This was a new one.
In the middle of the room, huddled up against a rusted heap that had once been a desk, was a girl. Blonde pigtails, long, long enough that they pooled on the filthy ground by her knees. This wasn’t the unusual part; tied-up girls were generally considered a professional hazard, albeit one that Batman could really do without. No, the unusual part would be her outfit—more aptly called a costume, really—which toed the line between adult entertainment and art installation. Or potentially a cosplay. There weren’t any of the usual suspects in town—Gotham wasn’t as popular a convention destination as other cities its size, for reasons Batman thought should be obvious—but there could always be the outlier. Some sort of party. For people who dressed up like this, or wanted to hire women who did.
Under a too-short, too-pink skirt were white stockings that wouldn’t survive contact with the filth on the floor. They matched long white gloves that appeared to have the facsimile of nails on the outside for reasons Batman could not quite fathom. An exposed midriff tilted the score towards someone who had been employed to leap from a cake. The excessive number of over-sized, childish bows tilted it back. There was a group that enjoyed the combination of childish and suggestive, but Batman made it a point to keep a very close eye on those sorts of groups and any parties they might be throwing.
The girl’s—hopefully woman’s, but he wasn’t holding his breath—head, previously curled towards the ground, snapped up, as if she’d heard him, though he hadn’t made a sound. She was wearing a mask, stuck in between form and function. Too long and covering too much of her cheeks to be considered a domino mask, but still hiding too little. Despite also being bright pink, it didn’t belong with the outfit. To be fair, the outfit didn’t particularly belong with itself, either. The mask shadowed her eyes, helped along by the dim light; they were visible, but looked little more than dark pools. He couldn’t eve be certain she saw him. She was looking up, but not directly at him.
Her face was young enough to be alarming, given the lack of coverage in what she was wearing. She was gagged with a thick cloth that did not look very clean, particularly in contrast to the bleach-commercial whites of her gloves and stockings. The unnatural way her arms were twisted behind her back implied bondage of one form or another.
Her shadowed eyes widened, and then she screamed. The sound was somehow barely muffled by the gag; long, loud, full of primal terror, and accompanied by a sudden and violent struggle. If he hadn’t been sure she was bound before, he certainly was now as she wrenched against herself, twisting and losing balance and slamming her body into the rusted desk behind her.
There was nothing else in the room; she was screaming at him. This wasn’t an unusual reaction, although it was normally a bit more subdued than blind, flailing terror. Well, unfortunately for her, scary or not, he was the only one here to help.
Anyone else hiding in the building would certainly be aware something was amiss now. No need to worry about making noise.
“I’m here to help. Calm down.”
That rarely worked, but it was something of a necessary preliminary. A decent number of people didn’t realize he could talk, and it calmed them down. Sometimes. Her reaction was unchanged; she appeared to be attempting to pull her own limbs of to expedite her escape. There was a surprising strength in the cords of her muscles, particularly given her slight frame. Tipped the scales a little back towards a professional performer.
Step one was introductions. Step two was approaching. A single step had her screams reaching a fever pitch that made Batman consider turning on his ear protection. She was no Black Canary, but she was trying her damn best. A particularly forceful yank of her limbs against whatever had her bound behind her back produced a loud, painful-sounding crunch, audible even over her screams, which changed in pitch from fear to pain, then died off slightly as she slumped over, shoulder twisted at an unfortunate angle. She had pulled it out of its own socket in her struggles.
Quickly, he took the last few steps to her side. If she kept struggling with the same strength that had produced that injury, the damage would get worse, fast. Worse than a terrified girl was always a terrified, injured girls. The more adjectives one added to the situation, the worse it became, generally. He knelt down, and could see her eyes more clearly as he reached for the gag. They answered a few questions and raised significantly more; her eyes weren’t just shadowed by the mask and the darkness. They were solid black from pupil to sclera. Almost. Just a ring of blue, barely visible in the dark room. That ring of blue was the only thing that communicated how the girl’s eyes were darting around wildly.
Alright. This didn’t completely rule out adult entertainment—weird contacts existed—but it was continuing to get less likely. Her pupils looked wider than they should be, but that could be a sign of drugging or just how her eyes looked. Well, what she was—or what had been done to her—mattered slightly less than keeping her from injuring herself further. She flinched when he twisted a gloved finger between her cheek and the gag. Her head jolted backwards and the gag popped out of her mouth—there was so much of it that he was impressed she’d managed to scream around it without choking. He yanked it downwards and pulled his hand back away from her, waiting for her reaction.
He’d been ready for another, louder round of screams. He was very happy to be incorrect. The girl’s eyes strained to focus on him—he was fairly sure—but kept twitching this way and that. She didn’t scream, but panted, sucking a few deep breaths into her lungs.
Dilated pupils—possibly. Difficulty focusing. Rapid-eye movement. Intense fear and paranoia, to the point of significant self-injury. It could be fear toxin, although that would imply a certain someone’s presence in Arkham as something other than a patient. But fear toxin wouldn’t explain the blackened state of her sclera, her bizarre outfit, or what she was doing at the end of a trail leading from Arkham.
“Are you real?” she croaked finally. Her voice was hoarse and low from screaming. She had a neutral, newscaster’s American accent.
“I am,” he replied gravely.
“Are you Batman?”
“I am,” he repeated.
“Holy fuck.”
Kari
There were a lot of things people said about Batman. He’s ten feet tall. He’s some kind of monster. He’s more cryptid than superhero. Kari, being someone who would describe himself as relatively unswayed by rumor, hadn’t given any of them much consideration. He’d grown up in Metropolis. He knew first-hand how much someone could seem larger-than-life even when they were, in fact, perfectly life-sized.
Despite this, when he became suddenly, acutely, horribly aware of some kind of potentially bat-themed demon in the room with him, his first thought, against all reason, was that it was for sure definitely Batman. But that was stupid, because there was no fucking way what he was seeing was even slightly human. It did not deserve a -man suffix. Superman was a -man, a -man who was super-. This was a monster quite possibly literally and actually straight from hell to torture him, worse than all the others put together. Black as night, blacker than night, actually, the edges of it fused with the shadows. Or were those shadows? They were just extensions of the thing’s body. Twisting and eldritch, the creature filled the entire room. Glints of light implied eyes, far, far too many, all over the room, but Kari’s focus was on the twin points of white in front of him.
The thing twisted and moved even as it seemed to hold still. Kari heard screaming, and belatedly realized he was the one screaming, and it wasn’t just echoing in from the abyss. He’d been seeing eyes on him, jeering, mocking, knowing him for what he was and loathing him accordingly, for what seemed like hours, but this was an entirely different beast. It filled him with a primal sort of horror that shoved every other thought out of his mind.
He struggled against the ropes that bound him, furious that he couldn’t seem to break them. What kind of a superhero didn’t have super-strength, anyway?! But he’d been laced up from wrist to shoulder—tied thoroughly and then more thoroughly still when his tormentor noticed how much he hated it. He was certain he looked ridiculous, moreso now while terrified and struggling uselessly. The sharp jab of humiliation punctuated all those that had come before it. Eyes on him and laughter ringing in his ears as he was brutalized, tied up, thrown around like a careless child’s toy.
There wasn’t time to focus on how humiliating this all was, because the thing—twisting, eldritch, inhuman—was approaching. How Kari got that sense, he wasn’t sure, as the creature seemed to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. But it was definitely approaching. Every cell in his body was burning with a kind of mortal terror he’d never experienced before. Everything was telling him that was soon as it was upon him, something horrible, something unfathomable, would happen. Almost mad with desperation, Kari struggled wildly against the ropes, begging for something, anything, to let him get free.
He yanked too hard as he twisted in the wrong direction. It didn’t seem sensible that ropes would be stronger than his body; wasn’t he supposed to be invulnerable? This was the first way he’d found to hurt himself, that was for sure. Pain coursed through him from his shoulder out, an intense and vibrant wrongness that lit the whole world red with agony. He swore he was blind for a few moments as all of his senses left him except unfamiliar and alien pain.
His mind was foggy as the world began to swim blearily back into focus. Where? Warehouse. Dragged there. Scarecrow. Drugged. Drugged! Right, yes, he’d been drugged! He knew that. He had to keep it together—that thing he’d seen, where was it?
Right! In! Front! Of! Him!
But being nearer to him now, it seemed to have coalesced into something a lot more… solid? Shaped? Was it just because he could see it clearer, or had the pain seared some of the drugs out of his brain? How much of this was just the goddamn drugs? How much of everything he’d been seeing since the asylum had just been a hallucination? He might never know.
He tried to control his trembling, staring down the creature as laughter echoed in his ears. If he was about to die, maybe he could at least try to go with a bit of dignity. And since he was drugged to all hell, there was a chance that what he was seeing wasn ’t even real. He tried holding onto that hope as shadows reached towards him—right up until he felt something on his face. He recoiled backwards, and felt the filthy cloth pull out of his mouth.
…Wait.
Kari really wished he could reach up and touch his face for confirmation, but… if his gag had been removed, that meant there was something in the room with him. Something real. This wasn’t exactly a comfort, but he squinted desperately at the shape, which was humanoid only in the sense that he could see eyes and a mouth. Arms? He tried to focus on that and not at the ringing, mocking laughter and all the fucking eyes. It wasn’t really helping, but he was trying, and that counted for something, probably.
“Are—” His voice sounded alien to his own ears, rough and low, like he’d been gargling broken glass and sandpaper. His throat hurt. Probably all the screaming. “Are you real?”
“What a good fucking question, you idiot,” a dozen voices hissed from around him.
“I am,” a much more solid, for lack of a better word, voice replied. The mouth he was looking at moved at the right time and everything! There was a real thing in the room with him, he was certain of it, and it had a vaguely person-shaped mouth!
“…Are you Batman?”
He wasn’t sure what answer he was hoping for, here. He was hard-pressed to think of a worse-case scenario than this being Batman, but this was Gotham, so he was confident there were worse-case scenarios he just couldn’t think of right then. It could have been, like, the Joker or something. Or a real-life bat-themed demon. Although, thinking about it, he had only his own assumptions to go off of vis-a-vis whether or not Batman was, in fact, a demon. He wasn’t gonna be the one to say there was no such thing as bat demons. Not right now, that was for damn sure.
“I am,” came a solid reply, followed by a thousand rippling echoes of all the terrible things this implied, how disappointing Kari was as a person, and what the hell was he even doing here? This wasn’t how he wanted to meet Batman. He hadn’t wanted to meet Batman at all! Okay, that was a lie, but he definitely hadn’t wanted to do it like this. He had wanted, like, the exact opposite of this!
Kari breathed in the implications all at once. He was fucked. How fucked was he? That depended. On a lot of things, things Kari had no way of knowing, things he could barely even focus on now, with derisive laughter ringing in his ears and a thousand leering eyes that burned inside his lids even when he closed his eyes. What must he look like right now? Laughable, pathetic. First impressions were everything, and now Batman’s first impression of him would always be of him bound like a whore in a filthy warehouse. Drugged and helpless from a botched fool’s task—
Focus. There was someone real here. Something real.
“Do you remember how you got here?” It took Kari a moment to recognize the statement as a question aimed towards him, and a moment longer to consider it. Too much time, definitely.
“…No?” he said hesitantly.
Yeah.
Alright.
Great fucking idea.
Let’s lie to Batman.
“…Really.”
“… …y…es?”
It was impossible for Kari to say how one could give a dour look when they were basically an approximation of a human head shrouded in darkness. Kari could only see the bottom half of Batman’s face, and two glowing holes of white where eyes should be. Nonetheless, the dourness was being communicated, somehow. Kari was vaguely aware of his arms shaking in his bonds, but he swallowed and kept his mouth shut. There was no way he could tell Batman the truth, even if he was absolutely sure he couldn’t get in trouble—and he was very much not sure of that! But frankly, the whole situation was just too goddamn embarrassing.
Batman
Batman considered the tied-up girl on the floor as he knelt in front of her. She was actively shaking now, body language loudly declaring the fear her masked face and solid-black eyes failed to show. She was obviously abnormal, and it was extremely unlikely that she was anything even resembling an innocent bystander. But what she wasn ’t was an inmate from Arkham. He knew all of them. She would have stood out. His would-be breakout was looking more and more like a botched break-in.
He considered the best approach. It would be very easy to intimidate her. She came pre-intimidated. But frightening an already terrified, drugged, probably-teenage girl wasn’t high on the list of things he liked doing. It might also prove unnecessary. He could try to comfort her. This was also not particularly high on the list of things he liked doing, and more problematically: he was shit at it. Especially when wearing a mask and a persona specifically designed to inspire fear. This was a problem that did come up, but normally in this situation he had a Robin he could foist the issue at.
No point thinking about that. He might be the worst possible person for this, but unfortunately for both of them, he was also the only one here.
“…I know you’re scared right now,” he began, and was immediately interrupted by a choking noise that could have been a laugh, or could have been someone stepping on a dehydrated goose. “…But I can help if you tell me the truth.”
The girl stiffened. Batman wondered if she’d be any good at lying even stone-cold sober. Her body language had built-in exclamation points.
“…You’re here to help?” she asked, overly-cautious, the suspicion in her eyes clear even without much eye to work with. The mask covered her eyebrows, but moved in a way that suggested them.
“I am,” he assured her. It was almost certainly not going to turn out to be a lie.
“…Am I in trouble?” she asked hesitantly, voice understandably shaky.
“…Well. You’re tied up in a warehouse. So technically, I think you were already in trouble when I got here.”
Another bark of laughter, this was more obvious and less goose-adjacent, followed by a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, okay, fair enough.”
“Do you remember how you go there?”
Stiffness, then a slump as she seemed to give up. “Parts. I was drugged.”
“Scary looking guy in a mask?” Batman suggested.
“No, you showed up later,” she said dryly.
“Ha ha.” He’d thought he was playing along, but she flinched and looked abashed.
“Sorry. Yeah. I didn’t get a good look at him, but it was…” She paused, the rings of her eyes darting upwards as she thought. “Guy in a… gas mask? Burlap? Are burlap gas masks a thing?”
“They are if you favor aesthetic over function. Where did you run into him?”
The tings of blue that made up the only particularly visible part of her eyes glanced to the side, away, then down, to the left. “Outside?” As if asking if he’d buy it. He tried not to sigh too audibly. It was clearly audible enough; she flinched again. It was probably mostly because she was drugged. Being able to form sentences while on fear toxin was impressive in its own right.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she muttered, glaring down towards the ground. This was a claim almost never made by people who had, in fact, not been doing anything wrong.
“Think of it this way,” Batman suggested. “Even if you were doing something wrong, I’m still not going to tie you up and leave you drugged in a warehouse.”
“Wow, what a sweet-talker,” she said, voice dripping sarcasm. She looked abashed immediately afterwards, again. It was as if her brain kept lagging behind her mouth. “I mean, um…”
“Where,” he reminded her.
She looked down. About as far down as she physically could. She might have been trying to curl up into a ball, but there was the matter of the ropes. “…In Arkham,” she said finally, voice barely above a whisper.
“And what were you doing in Arkham?”
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong!” she protested immediately, as if breaking into an asylum for the criminally insane wasn’t already ‘something wrong.’ “I wasn’t there to break anyone out or cause problems! I was just in the old records room, I swear!”
“Calm down,” Batman said. Mostly because she looked ready to cry, and he would really prefer that she didn’t.
“That asshole was already in there! He jumped me and he had a cloth with something on it and anyway I didn’t even get the chance to look at anything so if you think about it I didn’t really even break a law and—”
“Calm down,” he said again. “I’m going to untie you.” He probably should have done that sooner, but she was an unknown something-or-other found breaking into and then out of Arkham Asylum. “Take a few deep breaths, and start at the beginning.”
“Untie—?” She watched him, her head swiveling as he moved behind her. He was moving slowly and deliberately, trying not to spook her any more than she’d already been spooked. He was glad he was already used to J’onn, or the colorless void of her eyes would have been unsettling.
Despite his warning, she didn’t so much flinch when he touched her as yelp and dive dramatically forward. All this accomplished was sending her toppling face first onto the floor. Batman politely averted his gaze slightly upwards behind his mask—not that she could tell. He didn’t want to test whether or not she’d had the sense to put on shorts underneath that skirt.
“I’m just going to untie your arms,” he told her again.
“Right,” she said, voice muffled against the ground. “Yes. Right. Sorry.”
He wound up pulling her upright by the ropes. It wasn’t particularly kind, but his options for safe places to put his hands were direly few, and she didn’t seem to appreciate being touched at the moment. Scarecrow had really done a number on her. Batman hadn’t realized he’d had this particular proclivity; she was tied up to an almost ludicrous extent, ropes crisscrossing from her wrists all the way up her arms, most of the way to her shoulders. There was an honestly excessive amount of rope involved. And as if that weren’t enough, her wrists were tied to her ankles, hobbling her further. Scarecrow must have anticipated having a lot more time, or he wouldn’t have wasted it on this. Maybe he’d been interrupted by the alarm.
“I don’t suppose you’d be comfortable with me using a knife,” he posited. His answer came in the form of a particularly pathetic whimper. This time, he managed not to sigh at all. “It would be quickest.”
She was shaking like the last leaf on a tree, trying to make it through the whole winter alone. Batman was doing calculations in his head about fear toxin doses, weight, and half-life. He’d perhaps need to figure out a way to tell her she was being very brave, except without sounding condescending or like an ‘80s sitcom dad.
“G-go for it,” she stammered, voice carrying bravado that didn’t even begin to carry through to any other part of her.
“Alright.” He pulled a fairly small utility knife out of its sheath on his leg. He started with where her wrists were tied to her ankles, in part so that he could avoid bringing the knife into contact with her skin for as long as possible. “Why don’t you tell me everything you remember?”
Kari, But Like, A Few Hours Ago
Contrary to copious present evidence, Kari was not an idiot.
He’d been planning this for months . He’d started as soon as he realized where the trail led. Gotham was the big leagues, and unlike Metropolis or smaller cities out west, it didn’t tend to have a lot of little heroes running around in the shadows, helping. The shadows in Gotham held more than most little heroes could help with, and stories suggested that the Joker in particular didn’t like anyone else in a mask or cape butting into his ongoing cat-and-mouse with Batman. So Kari had waited until the Joker wasn’t a problem anymore.
Of course, the trail didn’t just lead to Gotham, oh no. It led to Arkham Asylum—where said Joker was currently in residence. This was where Gotham liked to store its many terrifying, overpowered lunatics. And Kari knew himself; stealth wasn’t exactly his forte. He was a man—barely—in a hot pink miniskirt, for fuck’s sake. He could be a lot of things, but subtle was not one of them and probably never would be. But this wasn’t something he could charm out of a guard. So he’d studied. He’d done recon. He ’d called in favors, very, very carefully. He’d done more studying in the last few months than he’d done in twelve years of school.
He’d picked the night so carefully. He’d been nosing around Gotham University for ages, dropping hints, letting everyone come to their own conclusions, so no one thought it was weird when he took a sudden trip out to see the campus. Joker was freshly yanked from the streets, and city should have been in a lull for a few days, a few weeks. Busy stabbing each other for even temporary ownership of newly available territory. Sure, Batman would be busy dealing with that shit, but that was the point! Who wanted Batman around when they were planning to break into Arkham Asylum, even if it was for totally benign reasons?
He’d pulled every string. He’d milked every resource. He’d learned schedules and memorized blueprints and the city map and the fucking sewer layout, just in case. He’d made bribes, which he didn’t like doing to begin with—asking someone, let alone paying them, to look away from him went against his very nature. But he’d done it! He knew where to go to get where he needed to be; he knew how small of a window he had to be there. Quick extraction. In, out, no bats the wiser, and then he could hunker down and figure out his next steps based on the information he recovered.
And it had been going perfectly! Despite wearing high heels and bright white stockings and gloves, with a garishly pink mask he had no way of removing, he’d gotten in! It was a bit weird to wear an oversized trench over his costume, but it helped hide the brightest bits of his outfit, and he’d known where all the cameras and guards were. It was perfect! He’d almost started feeling a bit proud of himself for pulling it off so well.
And then he’d walked right into the room, the room with the records, the old record room, the room no one had any business being in.
And Scarecrow was in it.
For some god fucking damn shitty fucking reason, Scarecrow apparently needed some old information from the files the exact same night that Kari did.
Kari didn’t even notice him until it was too late. An arm around his neck and something sharp to his jugular. He didn’t even have his rod out, let alone in a weapon form, because of course he didn’t! It fucking glowed sometimes, and he still hadn ’t figured out when or why or how to make it stop. He’d heard the snap, a needle trying and failing to pierce his skin, breaking instead. Didn’t appreciate how hard the guy’d probably been pushing to make it break. Kari took advantage of the confusion, slammed the back of his head into the face of his assailant, which had given him enough space to pull away. He saw rough-hewn cloth that seemed to be trying to be a face and failing. He smelled a stench like an upturned chemistry lab. He realized very quickly who he was dealing with, because he hadn’t walked into Gotham not knowing the rogue’s gallery.
Not that it did him much good. He didn’t even finish pulling away before Scarecrow yanked him back, shoving Kari’s face into a rough, obviously-drugged cloth. Kari had struggled, trying not to breathe. Obviously, that did not turn out to be one of his powers.
And that was when shit really went to hell in a handbasket.
The first thing Kari became aware of was the eyes. Too many eyes, everywhere. At first, they seemed to materialize from nowhere, or grow from the walls. Then bodies began to form around them. First vague, jeering, laughing. Then more concrete, transforming into faces he knew from the news or from his own close calls. Heroes. Idols. He recognized half a dozen people amongst the shifting faces, people who couldn’t possibly be here.
Scarecrow used drugs. He knew about this, he’d read… studied… reports…
“Oh, and you thought reading some paperwork meant you could be a superhero? What, you’d study like you were still in high school, and that would be that?”
“That is the majority of your life experience, right? School?”
“Rich-kid prep school.”
“All that money and they couldn’t teach him not to be an idiot. Couldn’t even teach him to be a man; talk about money wasted.”
Kari whimpered, spinning around in place. They were all around him.
“I don’t suppose I could impress upon you to tell me what it is you’re seeing?” Another voice, this one a little different, and not just because of what it was saying. “I’m always so curious.”
Kari continued to spin around, trying to find the source of that voice amongst so many others.
“What makes a little thing like you tick?”
“Little freak, little fag. Do you want to be a woman? At least commit, then you’d be something.”
“Sometimes it’s a bit boring… snakes, spiders, bats… A lot of bats. It’s very tiring. But look at that expression! Are you going to cry?”
“You’re playing at being a superhero just like you’re playing at being a girl. You make the real thing look bad in both cases.” This voice was almost as solid as the one that had to be Scarecrow’s, and far more recognizable. Kari saw him as he formed, stepping out of the crowd of voices, eyes, bodies. Blue suit and an unmistakable cape, taller in a way that made him loom over everyone around him. Superman walked towards him out of the masses, face twisted in rage and disgust.
“There are real women who get killed every day for doing what you do for a cheap thrill. Is this a game to you?” Superman scolded him furiously, continuing forward. “Just a costume you put on, then take right back off to go back to being a rich boy? You’re making things worse for people who actually matter.”
Kari let out a choked sob as his knees went out from under him. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if that made it any better. “I’m sorry, please don’t—”
“Please don’t what?” said voices overlapping. “Please don’t point out all the people you put at risk with your little fetishistic dress-up games? Are you so used to getting your way that you’re scared of a tongue-lashing?”
“Please,” Kari said again, covering his ears with his hands. It did nothing to stop the voices. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop, I don’t know how to stop, I’m just like this, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry.”
He felt hands grab his wrists and shrieked, yanking them away. “Don’t fight,” a voice advised him. “I’m told it’s easier if you don’t fight.”
“Let me go!” he shrieked, and Superman tsked in disappointment.
“You really are useless, aren’t you? That’s why you wanted magic, isn’t it? No talent, no skills, no training. All that money, but you were too lazy to do anything smart with it.”
“Hold still, stop struggling.”
The hands gripping him were winning the fight, distracted as he was, twisting his arms behind his back and his weakly bucked and struggled.
“You should listen, you know. Then maybe they wouldn’t hate you as much.”
Kari let out a choked sob, clenching his eyes shut to hide from Superman’s disgusted expression. He couldn’t block out the voices, the jeers and mockery and lectures.
Then he felt rope around his wrists.
He snapped into the present, into reality or what passed for it, suddenly leaping forward despite being on his knees, the ground bouncing like rubber underneath him. It felt like his body was heavy, or like he was dragging dead weight. Something slammed into him from behind, heavy and rough and hot and sharp. The weight fell on top of him and shoved him down. He felt a knee on his back and screamed. Rope tightened quickly around his wrists, binding them together before he could think of a way to slip out.
“Look at you, damsel in distress again,” Superman said, somehow in Kari’s range of vision despite the fact he was face down on the ground. “I’m not saving you a third time. There are people who matter, people worth saving. Not just some rich white kid too stupid to stay out of trouble.”
Kari felt a weight shift off his back, and he was being yanked up by the rope around his wrists. He arched himself backwards, the back of his head slamming into something solid. Above the din of voices, he could swear he heard a pained grunt. Making someone else hurt right now felt good for reasons Kari didn’t care to consider.
“More solid than you look,” the voice hissed, and he felt more rope against his arms, being pulled up his skin. He screamed again. “Oh, you don’t like that at all, do you?” the voice mused. “Bad memory? Or maybe you don’t like being immobile? Helpless?” Kari spasmed his whole body, kicking back until he felt something connect. Another grunt of pain—satisfying—he kicked again, driving two-inch heels into what he hoped was Scarecrow.
“You,” an irritated voice said, “are extremely wiggly.” A grip caught one of his ankles as he kicked, pulled his leg straight again. Something was shoved against the front of his leg—he couldn’t tell what. A table? A frame? Something solid. “Can your limbs break? Shall we find out together?”
Kari gave one last kick, then felt his leg being abruptly yanked downwards, bent the wrong way against the solid object against his knee. He screamed again, whole body going rigid as pain lanced through him. Fury alongside the fear, but the fear was winning out. Could his limbs break?
“Ridiculous,” the voice scoffed. “If someone threw you, you’d probably bounce. It’s a shame we don’t have more time, but you’re making such a racket, and I do have work to do.” Kari struggled again, because he learned lessons poorly and slowly, as Superman had suggested. “Does this not even hurt you enough for you to behave?” Kari’s leg was yanked down, even harder this time, and he screamed again, tears bursting out of his eyes and dripping down his mask. He went limp, uncertain if his leg was broken. He didn’t think he could move it.
“There we go. One really has to be excessive with you, hmm? Well, I suppose anyone could have guessed that just looking at you. Do you think we can get you somewhere more interesting? You’re too loud, but it would be a shame to waste you…”
Kari let out another screech of protest as he felt his limbs being tied further, struggled a little less simply as he felt his legs bent backwards and tied to his wrists. Not quite hogtied, but fairly close to it. Humiliation and fear burned in him, moreso as he was picked up, with a faint grunt of effort from his tormentor.
“Heavier than you look, too. Let’s see if we can’t figure you out together, hmm?” Kari let out a violent kick which made pain spasm through his back, tied together as he was. His heel hit something, not a man, maybe a wall. Glass. He heard the sound of shattering above the din of jeers and laughter, and then a siren drowned out almost everything else. Cursing, movement, fast enough that he felt sick, world blurring into a haze of shapes and eyes and strange sensation. He remembered enough to struggle; occasionally it earned him a blow that did him no real harm.
Finally, the world finished spinning in a thud of solid pain. He felt a floor beneath him; he was done soaring through the air. He was still furiously dizzy and barely had a concept of which way was up. All he could hear was mockery and insults; he had no idea where he was, and was only vaguely capable of conceptualizing who he was. He stared blearily upwards—maybe upwards—and saw a twisting face that might have been Scarecrow, but might also have been literally anything else.
“You,” the air around him hissed, “are very annoying.” He knelt down, a knee on Kari’s bare stomach, pushing him painfully into shards of glass that couldn’t pierce his skin. Knees bent and arms tied behind his back, it was a very uncomfortable position in a lot of ways. “But we’re finally alone. What should we learn first?”
Batman, Back In The Now
“And you were looking for what in the archives, exactly?”
The young girl bit down on her bottom lip, rubbing at her recently freed arms with the one that wasn’t still hanging awkwardly at her side. She hadn’t stood up off the floor yet, and so Batman had also stayed kneeling. She seemed like she’d be very susceptible to looming at the moment. Nothing about her story had explained her appearance, in fact, a deliberate stealth mission made her choice of wardrobe make even less sense than it had to begin with.
“Just old inmate records,” she said evasively, somewhere between half a lie and all of one.
“Which you needed and couldn’t just requisition, because…?”
“Oh please, if they’d just hand them over, do you think I’d have come all the way here?” Her eyes were difficult to read, but her tone, as well as the twitch of her jaw and flare of her nose, was pure irritation. It said something about her character that she could be annoyed over being questioned in this situation. She looked away, hand going to her shoulder in a gesture reminiscent of crossed arms. She looked every inch a petulant young woman… albeit one caught in the unfortunate explosion of a Valentine’s Day sale. “I need them, they wouldn’t give them to me. It’s not rocket science.”
“…Are you copping an attitude at Batman?” he asked, more amused than menacing. The sullen whines of a teenager were familiar in a way he didn’t care to think about. Of course, it didn’t take much to be menacing right now, say, just existing around her while she was drugged with fear toxin. Her whole body shuddered.
“Look, it’s personal. It was nothing bad, I swear. Someone I knew went into Arkham and it’s not on the official records.” Depending on when this was, that was unfortunately not uncommon. Arkham was run by the government, was from back when asylums had been for diseased women, and had been one of the last things Batman had managed to dig his fingers into. Fingers which were only so dug, even now. “I don’t suppose you could just be here to free me, and then swoop off to find the bad guy? He didn’t leave that long ago. I think.”
“Putting aside the fact you’ve admitted to breaking into Arkham Asylum,” he began pointedly. She winced. “You are a small, drugged woman in an abandoned warehouse in one of the worst neighborhood’s in Gotham. And Gotham has a lot of bad neighborhoods.”
“Are you offering me a ride home?” Her eyebrows raised, or rather, her mask did. Only the ridge of it pressing against her cheek provided evidence that it wasn’t just spray-painted on.
“Also,” Batman continued, “you look like the Martian Manhunter and Starfire combined in a Sweethearts factory.” She snorted out a laugh. He tapped his mask near his own eyes, and her good hand raised to her own. She touched her mask, ran fingers along the ridges around the eye holes, as if it was alien to her. The mask dipped like skin when she pushed against it.
“I always forget about those. Erm, I mean—” She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m not an alien, if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s just part of the uniform.”
“The uniform.”
The girl shifted uncomfortably, then her hand went back to her injured shoulder. “Is there any chance of me pleading the fifth and you letting me wander the unsafe streets of Gotham?”
“Pleading the fifth is for courts. And for when you might implicate yourself in a crime. Is that the case here?”
“No! Christ, no! Jesus!” she exclaimed, first fear, then anger again. “Seriously, I’m one of the good guys! Have you ever seen a villain dressed like this?” She gestured at herself broadly.
“I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that,” he said, somewhat untruthfully.
“Wow, what, really? Is this because there are no anime conventions in Gotham?” He said nothing, and she finished for him, almost tripping over herself. “No, right, yeah, that’s stupid, why would Batman watch anime.” She laughed nervously. “But no, seriously. Look, yes, I snuck in, but I was just looking for a friend that passed through the asylum, in such a way that they won’t like, admit to it for me. I swear. I wasn’t there to break anyone out, or cause any issues. If Scarecrow hadn’t jumped me, I would have been in and out before anyone even noticed. And, by the way, Scarecrow was in there, so technically I stopped a crime. That has to get me some brownie points, right?”
It was difficult, sometimes, to not say things like “Batman does not give brownie points” in a very sober and serious voice.
She didn’t warrant any real interrogation, not in her condition, and not when a Google search of “magical girl with black eyes” would probably bring up an array of results if she’d ever done literally anything, anywhere. He didn’t think she would be difficult to find a second time, if she was in his town to start trouble. She practically glowed. …She might have actually glowed, just a little. Something about the way light reflected off her skin.
Also, she looked like she was going to cry, and her arm was still out of its socket.
“Let me fix your arm.” It was a request, but he didn’t quite enunciate it like one.
The girl glanced over it at it and groaned. “Alright,” she said with a wince. “Might as well do it while I’m still drugged.”
Fear toxin didn’t have any pain reducing qualities, but he wouldn’t be the one to tell her that.
Kari
Kari was very proud of himself for not screaming.
He’d been doing a lot of screaming tonight, and he really felt like screaming when Batman popped his shoulder back in, but he refrained. Batman had a bad enough first opinion of him.
It took two tries, not because Batman didn’t know what he was doing, but because it took Kari a minute to figure out how to make his body let Batman rearrange it. It fought outside forces on instinct, and figuring out what and how and when and why was very much a work in progress type-thing.
Kari shifted his shoulder slightly, wincing. If his eyes were burning, it was definitely not from tears, and no one could tell him otherwise.
“Th-thanks,” he managed, cursing his voice for shaking. “So, uh, does this mean I can leave?”
“Are you still hallucinating?”
“Uhhhhhhhh,” Kari replied, glancing around at the twisting shadows full of eyes, teeth, and demons unseen. “I really hope so.”
“Then you shouldn’t be out on the streets.” Batman said this with a tone that implied there was never a correct time for Kari to be out on the streets.
Kari raised an eyebrow. “Gonna walk me home?” He tried to stand, but his legs screamed in protest, so he just shifted them out from underneath him, willing pins and needles to leave quickly.
“Do you live around here?”
“Oh my god.” Kari rubbed his face with one gloved hand. The texture was like skin on skin and also not at all like that. It was hard to explain. It had taken a lot of practice to not poke himself in the eye with the fake nails, but he wouldn’t be telling Batman that. “What. No. Batman is not walking me anywhere. I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t stand up.”
“That’s temporary,” Kari replied loftily.
“You’re a stoned girl in a neon miniskirt. This is Gotham.”
He had never gotten the opportunity to get used to the Superman-safety-net of Metropolis, had never been able to be one of the drunk girls stumbling out of the club without fear in her heart. He didn’t know what danger was like, but he also didn’t know what security was like either. This was all fine.
“Look, unless I run into two supervillains in one night, there’s nothing here that can hurt me.” Kari probably shouldn’t have told him that, but whatever. His pride was stinging and it was hard to keep secrets from Batman, okay?
“How old are you, twelve?”
“I’m nineteen!” Kari snapped before he could think better of it.
“So, twelve.”
“Oh my god, I am not being harassed by old man Batman right now,” Kari growled. “Maybe I haven’t been doing this forever like you or Superman, but I’m not going to get mowed down by some shitty back-alley mugger—”
“Doing this?”
Batman’s voice spoke volumes.
Kari swallowed, the laughter getting louder and the hands feeling more like claws. He tried to ignore it, without much success. He didn’t want to be in this warehouse with this bat/man for one more minute. He forced his legs to straighten.
“I’m not, like, encroaching on your turf. I’m not staying here. I was in town ‘cause I needed something.” Batman followed him up, which sucked because he loomed like hell, but did help to reinforce that he had somewhat human-adjascent anatomy, at least.
“You shouldn’t be ‘doing’ any of ‘this.’ You’re twelve.”
“How old was Robin?” Kari snapped, then smacked both his hands over his mouth with the force of a blow. He couldn’t exactly read body language with this much hallucinating happening, but he thought that Batman had gone very, very still. And he’d already been, like, super still.
“That,” Batman said, very slowly. “Proves my point. Not yours.”
Kari swallowed. Now was so very not the time to inform Mr. Batman that he’d already been in an explosion and had been fine. Now was the time to change the subject and pretend he hadn’t just said the rudest, meanest thing ever said to anyone.
“If you want to punch me in the face,” Kari offered, “it would prove my point and I’d feel less like an absolute piece of shit.”
“I am not going to punch you in the face.”
“Are you sure? I’m kind of already dressed like a clown.”
“I am going to get you to a hotel room,” Batman said with an air of finality. “And tomorrow, you’re going to go back where you came from.”
Kari thought about cities on the other side of the country and a cold trail that let to Arkham’s gates.
Well, he said to go back. He never said to stay gone.
“You’re going to buy a hotel room? With what? A bat credit card?”
“There’s a hotel not too far away that doesn’t ask questions.”
Kari bit his lip, hard, to choke down every single line that immediately came to the tip of his tongue about being taken to a hotel that doesn’t ask questions by a man(?) in a bat costume(?) while dressed like this.
When they got to the hotel, and it turned out to be the very nice one owned by Wayne Enterprises that Kari was already staying in, it was much, much harder to continue not saying stupid things, like about that article a while back in the Daily Planet that had kind of suggested Batman and Bruce Wayne maybe had a thing. But Batman was gone and there was a very nice man escorting Kari the back way to a private suite, and anyway Kari had made enough bad decisions to last him the next month.
But not any longer than that, because he had to apply to Gotham University.