My Dear Baby Bird.

Un. Mon homme mort

(She has the perfect conditions for weed from the street.)

The smeared sink grabs at her attention, sticks her stained hands to the white marble. It looks rotten. She fishes for a rag, one that had seen better days before she had decided to buy it. It now cleans hair dye, and the contents that clutch onto her skin. She swears, before turning the tap to the left side. Warm water greets her, and it is now that white shines through. For so much work, the sink should look worth a million dollars. A million diamonds and a million stars. But it is white, white with cracks and broken edges. It is her best sink, the only one that has ever run hot.

She dries her hands on a red towel, one that will reach its replacement soon. She avoids the under end of the towel, and reaches higher to dry off. But before she starts her five hour sleep, she fills a cup with green plants and yellow and red fairies with water, and gives each of her flowers some of it. They decorate her little bathroom wonderfully, the best chance (joke) at a lively home she will ever get.

The carpet, the orange and yellow rug beneath her feet is fuzzy, an item she had found rather luckily in one of the only shops that fit her budget. It was beautiful, it still is, and lifts up her whole bathroom. If there was one thing she could do, it is decorate with little to no money.

The chipped brown door closes behind her, and the walk isn't far. Her bathroom connected with the main room, the one that held the kitchen, living room and bedroom. She was able to put a little more privacy to the bedroom, but the rest sits in an open space decorated with plants and orange and red, yellow and too many small lamps. It was the best she could get. The view isn't great, the stars hidden by the lights of Gotham. The city never sleeps, as does the crime, and so lights and a little feeling of safety always had to be on. Of course it never prevented the atrocious crimes that followed, but they helped some bats find the body. Gotham was not a kind city, nor was it a safe one, but it had people that tried, even if they too, died all alone in the midnight of Gotham.

And before sleep can take her to the cloud she spends five hours on, she swears she hears a bird that is all too familiar.

-

Gotham, when held captive by the nightmares of the dark, was a city that ruled with crimes as its order. The law for longer has held no real meaning anymore. Dead bodies never slow to show up, even if captures and arrests rise in numbers, and more and more criminals leave their business for a life behind bars. Gotham is a city that is held alive by crimes and the one percent, so even when the sun breaks through the shadow of the clouds, it is still as unsafe as it was hours before. It has a mind of its own, a violent one at that. And whether the police shows up to inspect and investigate dead bodies, or a vigilante with cape and bat symbol leaves criminals barely alive, it is a violent and vicious cycle. There is no peace for Gotham, and Alina knows that.

Each day she sees the outcome of the guns and the knives that are used to kill. Each day she sees another body of another criminal that holds slight familiarity. They all look stiff and scared, like the nightmare that Gotham is, has finally dawned on them. Some wear a golden band at their right hand, others wear a chain with a symbol of religion, something naive that never could've saved them. And some lay bare on the cold table in front of her, chest sliced open and brains blown out. She wears red gloves each day, even though they were white in the beginning. The bringer of peace and order are just as violent as their darker side.

Gotham, for the most part, was a bitter cold city.

Red roses linger in the city, a bringer of sorrow just as the crow in black secures you a spot in whatever cell the GCPD had for you. You see them at graves, cemeteries full of red and spirits. The thorns warn you to step back, to leave whoever lays beneath earth and wood. For Valentine's Day, they aren't used anymore, the mere thought of gifting a loved one the symbol of grief and death worthy of a break up and accusations.