Cats Eat Birds - Damian Wayne/OC

65 | BLIND AS A BAT

ARKHAM ISLAND | TWO DAYS FROM NOW

     BATMAN WATCHED FROM above.

The harbor was full of police and fire-boats from the mainland, washing the dark water with flickers of blue, red and white light. Arkham Island's North dock was flooded with orange jumpsuits and the uniformed officers collecting them. Smoke still spewed from the penitentiary and intensive treatment buildings, and Batman watched it snake into the cloudy night time-sky, the worst kind of beacon. Hopefully, the press would diffuse the panic from the near-outbreak. Gotham could use some good news, even if it was only good because things had nearly gone over the edge again.

Joker. Because of course it was.

To Batman's left, two inmates were yelling and fighting as they were filtered into the crowds of prisoners heading for the boats. In the last hour, most of them had been cleared for temporary transport to Black Gate. These two didn't seem to like that idea very much. Batman watched them shove off the nearest officer and make a break for it.

A batarang landed with a hiss between their feet before they could even clear a yard. The two men jumped, yelled, and looked up, but no one was there. No one had to be. The threat made clear, they retreated into line.

Certain that the situation there had at least been handled, Batman sighed, deflated, and left the shadow of the nearby lighthouse to shoot a grappling line to the bridge. It was what had started this. Batman had his suspicions, but it mostly looked like the inmates—led by the Joker—had taken advantage of the confusion from a gas-line explosion that had blown the first section of the mainland bridge into the water. That investigation would have to be for a later time, however.

Batman's concussion came into play mid-swing, so maybe the mark had been missed by the grapple's teeth, and maybe some foot holds were made in the brick when no one was looking.

Far above the prying eyes of the officers, the rest of the Gotham vigilantes on the scene, and the recovered inmates, Batman collapsed onto the top of the bridge. She pulled off the cowl and gasped.

"Holy fuck," said Cristen.

She bent to press her forehead into the cold concrete, trying to steady her pulse and rattling insight. The cowl and the stress had made her hair sweaty and gross. The armor was just slightly too big, but the cape and chest plate hid the distinction between Batman and teenage-girl-covering-for-Batman better than Cristen would have thought. Her gauntlets made her hands feel too thick and full of sweat, so Cristen turned on the suit's cooler (bless Lucius Fox!) and rolled onto her back to gasp for breath. Above her, Gotham's crescent moon glistened silver through the fog. Truly, this was a night for Batman.

Her comm chirped. It was in the Batman cowl, which made Cristen feel like a little girl walking in her dad's too-big boots, so she wiggled her fingers around until she could pull it out and press it to her ear. She greeted, flat and exhausted, "Please tell me there isn't something else. Please tell me it's over."

Dick would have laughed at any other time, but currently he was glaring down the Joker as they deposited him into an armored car for transport. "I just wanted to tell you how good you did out there. I'm sorry I wasn't there to take it up, kid, and I..."

Nightwing talked more, but Cristen's thoughts bled away from him. She could sense the Joker even from all the way up here, chittering and giggling to himself, a black hole of evil and malice and cruelty on her insight's map. Just focussing on him made Cristen feel sick.

They'd bagged Joker four days ago. Just four. And no, Batman and Robin didn't smash into one of his hideouts and dig him up from whatever hole he'd crawled into. No, Stray didn't help intervene with the scheme he'd endangered the whole city with. All that had happened was something the Joker wouldn't say, then he walked into GCPD headquarters and simply turned—himself—in.