Batman: The Promise

Chapter 3: Afterthoughts

The snow was pelting down and she really couldn’t have wished for a better time of year to get lost in the white and grey. She wanted to turn back and see if Batman had managed to get out. Something heavy weighed inside her as she got clear of the GCPD but she knew she’d be cuffed before she could get close. She’d put the rebreather in and watched him close his eyes. He fell back on the wall and slid down it as she was pulled out by hands. How long had he stopped breathing?

No, don’t think about it right now. She had things to do. Her mind was filled with his smug, painted face. A small part of her hoped he’d been crushed in the collapse of the building but she knew he was too slick for that, but he wasn’t slick enough to shake her right now. The anger bubbled up inside. You didn’t leave people you loved to die. You’d do anything you could to save them. Like Batman had done for her. Thoughts of him flashed in her mind but she couldn’t focus on them in the cold. It’d make things worse.

Enough, idiot. No time to get mushy. Joker would be back at his little funland in the abandoned theme park in the Northern part of Gotham, near the hills. She’d get back there, grab some things, and make her way back to her apartment. Her two hyenas, Bud and Lou, would be waiting for her at the funland and no way was Joker keeping them two beauties. She’d fight him tooth and nail to get them back if that’s what it came to.

By the time she’d got back to Gotham Funland she was seething. Her heart boomed in her chest and she felt nauseous the rage kept everything in check. She’d stepped The Grey Ghost-train and she swallowed another pang of guilt. “I’m goin’ to kill ‘im,” she said as she stormed into the tunnel.

His workshop was lit up. In the main area behind the large, plastic ghosts and crudely-drawn ghouls was the area filled with boxed, tables, and electronic bits and pieces that Joker had been tinkering with but nothing had been tampered with. Joker hadn’t come back here, so where was he? She ended up waiting around for hours while she concocted all the thoughts in her head. Would the GCPD come back here before he did? Had the Joker been captured?

She’d sat and watched TV but all the reports from the GCN claimed the act of terrorism was a scapegoat and that her boyfriend—ex boyfriend—had escaped, Batman had been saved by the G.P.T.F—thank God—but there were numerous casualties. That bothered her more than it should have. But the thing that hung in her mind was the thought of Batman sucking down his last few breaths and how he’d selflessly given her a chance to make things right. She let out Bud and Lou who playfully licked at her hands, and told them to follow her as she packed up Joker’s secret rainy day cash from his safe. She walked out of the amusement park, away from everything she knew. Let him rot, she thought. She wouldn’t look back.

Batman was sat on the dock. Melanie had sat next to him nursing a cup of coffee. She handed it to Batman but he grunted and shook his head.

“We got in here and swarmed the place. The cops told us about the vault and how Joker had pulled a trap. Didn’t think he’d let Harley die too but who knows with him? He blew up the whole building. What happened with you in there?”

“A rare thing,” he said as he looked towards the carnage of rubble and metal.

He felt so stupid for the mistake but he wouldn’t let it show. When he’d gotten his breath back he congratulated Melanie and her crew for detaining as many goons as they could, but he wouldn’t leave until Joker’s corpse was found. They’d pulled out three goons that were barely breathing, but that was the beauty of their procedures. They believed in restraint and detain, not murder. When he’d approved the funding for the GCPD it had been his main goal, to incorporate the beliefs that had drawn him to his crusade in the first place. And now, he realized how much of a good choice that had been when he looked at how they treated incapacitated criminals. Compassion was at their forefront, not pain.

They’d thermal scanned the ruin and found only several more corpses. None of them were him. As the faint light of the early morning broke through the clouds, he zipped off through the air, aiming to get back home as quick as possible to find. He’d called in the Batmobile, and drove all the way back to Wayne Manor in silence, his thoughts not on the Joker who’d ended up getting away again out of pure luck, but Harley. He’d checked the GCPD radio signals but all he could hear was them putting her on an APB. He breathed a sigh of relief and drove straight through the caverns of waterfalls, through his tunnel, and out into the Batcave.

Stepping out he was welcomed back by the sound of gushing water, that familiar damp smell, and the distant echoing squeaks of thousands of bats above him. It felt somewhat empty since Alfred had gotten married. It was no issue. Bruce was happy that he was living in his own happiness. He couldn’t demand he follow what life he had left to his own devotion of the night. He’d been the bat long enough to live his own life. As he slid off his mask he thought of cooking something, but decided on coffee as he slumped down in front of the Batcomputer. It was like he was running on autopilot, sipping at the muddy water and leaning on his hand as he flicked through files and files of alphabetically-categorized leads of his foes, names, dates, events, and buildings. He flicked past documents regarding secret societies, cults, and possible dangers all under the headers CASE-CLOSED.

Over time the case-closed category had begun to fill up exponentially. He felt proud of that and skimmed through it again. With Arkham Prime replacing the once failing Arkham Asylum, with his funding, the rehabilitation and containment of Gotham’s criminal underworld was a greater success than he’d ever imagined. Poison Ivy had become a world-renowned medical herbologist and humanitarian, the Penguin had retired and settled down with his wife, becoming the Mayor of some faraway city in the United Kingdom, and Harvey Dent had undergone psychiatric support and had skin-grafts and reconstructive surgery on his face. He’d ended up becoming a consultant for one of the largest law-firms in Gotham.

There was a plethora of successful cases, so much so that when it came down to it, it seemed like only a few remained; Joker, Riddler, and Scarecrow were still out there, still on their own pathetic crusades but Arkham Prime was containing the thousands of others and had done successfully with a 0.04% success rate of escape.

He thought back to what he’d told Harley in the vault and mulled it over in his head on the if question of him having to move past Batman but that just bought him back to Harley, teary-eyed. He skimmed her profile and looked over her mugshot that had recently been taken when she’d attempted to blow up Gotham Bridge with the Joker, they’d both failed spectacularly. She looked sad in this recent mugshot though, her eyes were off deep in thought unlike any mugshot before which was a generic Harley-Quinn-esque tongue-out rocker pose. He kept staring at it and could make out there was regret in this new photo.

He finished his coffee and turned the monitor off with a sigh. Why couldn’t he get this niggling thought out of his head? He’d done what he was supposed to. He gave her the choice and she took it so what was the problem? He’d helped her. So as he undressed and made it to bed, why was he still thinking about those blue eyes, why was he thinking of her in this new light, and hoping for all the wrong reasons of why he wished she’d make good on her promise?

As he laid in the darkness he thought back to the last woman he’d loved; Selina Kyle. He couldn’t help but laugh at how he’d accomplished so many things with Batman. Catwoman had retired and was living out with her husband and two children in Metropolis. She’d send Bruce letters sometimes and the two were still on friendly terms. But that had been five years ago now since they’d shared their final kiss. She couldn’t live with Bruce because Bruce couldn’t live without the Batman, and he agreed. Now, and for the longest time, he felt like there were changes coming hard and fast, and that after he’d vomited out all the truth to the one person he’d never expected, he imagined he was beginning to realize the simple thing he didn’t want to acknowledge at that particular moment. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts flow; of the island of Arkham Prime, and a pair of bright, blue eyes twinkling like stars. He didn’t know which one to focus on more as he drifted away.