"November, 7th, 2:33 P.M, Gotham Cemetery
The day Duke buries his parents is sunny.
Bathed in the clean brightness of the afternoon sun, he feels somewhat mocked by the cynical choice of God for the weather.
The priest leads the modest procession through the cemetery’s neat, squared rows. Duke follows, entombed in his tuxedo like a relic encased behind glass. The fabric clings to him like a second, stifling skin. His tongue is a dry patch of glue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Sweat trickles down his spine, gathering in warm, uncomforting pools under his armpits. He tugs at his collar, desperate to release some of the stagnant heat.
The religious figure— a Japanese man in his late fifties whose robes swish stiffly as he moves— halts before a freshly installed gorin-tō. The five-tiered Buddhist gravestone stands sentinel over a patch of dry earth that's cracked like the back of a turtle's shell. In one hand, he holds a battered sutra book from which he begins to read a prayer like a scrupulous scholar presenting a paper.
A thin veil of incense smoke curls around him and the stones, smudging the air with a thick, suffocating scent. Its humidity is home to out-of -season crickets that hum happily as if the world hasn’t ended.
“May the attendees form a circle around the mortgage .” the priest intones, his voice thick, and accented.
“I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.” He goes on to say, and then starts chanting sutras.
Soon enough, they are all guided into doing the same. Their subdued whispers ripple out into the heat, blending with the sound of the rustling leaves.
An airplane flying overhead.
There is something obscene in the current sphere of movement within which Duke is confined. In the choreography of bowing heads. In the murmured syllables. In the sanctified distance. It’s the composition, Duke thinks. It’s merciful by nature. The dichotomy between how he feels inside—scattered, anguished—and the serene surroundings is unsettling.
He digs his nails into his palms and hopes it leaves angry, torn crescent marks so that he can care for them later.
When the ceremonial chant is complete, each mourner is invited to bow deeply before his parents’ portraits. The ritual calls for offerings: gifts for the afterlife, tokens of farewell. It’s more for his father’s sake than his mother’s— Dad was the Buddhist one. They had made a pact long ago, the three of them. Said that they’d be buried side by side, but in accordance with their own religion, and that Duke would be in the middle no matter what he ended up picking.
Of course, them dying at the same time had never been part of the agreement. Duke purses his lips.
The funeral is fake anyway.
It’s all Mr. Wayne’s idea. The boss had said that, if it became known that Duke’s parents had been Jokerized and were now recovering under Batman’s protection, the connection between Duke’s vigilante identity and his civilian self would be dangerously easy to draw. Said that it was better for the world to believe they died in a freak accident so that they could pretend Bruce Wayne’s guardianship of Duke was a charitable whim—which was, in fact, the case. The Gotham Gazette would probably print it on this week's third page, somewhere between Scarecrow’s disappearance and the new library opening on Murphy Avenue and Third. Duke can already see it in his mind's eyes; Charity or Strategy? Bruce Wayne’s Latest Adoption Raises Eyebrows, an article written by Vicky Vale.
He passes his tongue over his teeth.
When it’s his turn, he doesn’t donate anything. Barely looks at the picture he took of Dad on a beach day without knowing it’d become a photograph.
Mom had been very happy that day. She was freshly out of her heat, and always had a day or two where she was in such a good mood after it that the whole house breathed with it. She had said she wanted to see the sea on a whim, and Dad had made it happen. On the beach, she had taken off her shoes and Duke his, and they had played catch, chased Dad into the water, swam with their clothes still on and danced to no tune at all. At the end of the day, Duke had had a lump in his throat from how much fun it’d been. When Dad put him to sleep that night and asked, how many stars? Duke had said one hundred.
He stays in front of the photograph for a moment, suspended in between the past and the unbearable present.
Stays as the scent of saltwater slowly gets replaced by hot dust and autumn leaves.
As the sea falls far behind him.
He’s hushed to the side after a few minutes, and a woman he’s never seen before takes the next turn. She doesn’t bow so much as fall to the ground, sobbing, her body spasming as though possessed by an electrical wire.
She pours sakē in a small cup with the kind of exaggerated care associated with ancient artifacts and newborn babies, crying all the while.
She looks so sad it feels gross. It feels wet. It feels nauseating.
It leaves a strange ache in Duke’s chest. Makes him wonder about the interiority of his parents' life. The people they must've known who Duke's never met. The friends they had that are just names in his mouth. Duke's bones are suddenly straining— grinding—under the weight of all the other people they could have met. All of the different lives they could have lived, all of the other experiences they could have lived hadn't they spent their life breathing air into his tiny universe.
Duke worries at his lips. Looks at the line of people waiting and spots red hair on the other side of the itatbi.
Juliet is there, standing about thirty feet away.
If Duke tries hard enough, he can picture a younger version of her. The one he met back in kindergarten. He remembers when his mom picked him up that first day of school. He told her there was a very mean girl in his class. Juliet pinched kids when the teacher wasn’t looking. She scribbled on everyone’s watercolors with black crayon. She knocked down their towers in the center block. His mom listened, nodding, then she said:
"There is no such thing as a mean child, only an unhappy one."
"But you don’t know" he told her, "you didn’t see."
“I don’t have to see. I know.” She wouldn’t tell Duke how she knew, but she swore Juliet deserved nothing but his sympathy. The next day, when Juliet kicked down Duke's tower, he put a sympathetic hand on his classmate's shoulder. “It’s okay,” He said. “I know you’re just unhappy."
Then Juliet punched Duke in the eye.
After school, he told his mom she was wrong. Juliet was evil—she’d hit him. Duke waited for her to be angry, to tell him she would call her mother. Instead, she repeated that no one is evil, only unhappy, and unhappiness festers inside like a sore. Later, as he watched Juliet on the playground, hanging out alone or hiding under the wooden beams of the jungle gym, he’d worry. Imagining festering sores under her skin where no one could see.
He can still see, and he can feel all the sympathy his mom told him he should feel.
But that never made him any less afraid of Juliet.
He makes eye contact with her dead blue eyes. It was to be expected; He’d been staring, caught in the morbid gravity of his memories like he gets more often than not these days.
The instant their eyes lock is a shock nonetheless.
The world stills with the chilling precision of fate fulfilled, and it’s crystal clear, this moment. Resin poured and chemically frozen. The defective cloak leaving him completely naked and completely flawed once again. Duke sees himself as clearly as he sees her. He is nothing but apocryphal and beggarly, even now in his thoughts.
Their staring match lasts until she parts her lips like she's about to say something. Then, her mouth closes again, forming a line as thin and final as a blade.
After that, everything moves too fast.
It's like zipping through a movie.
The line moves. Juliet moves with it. She's getting closer. Panic rushes through Duke like an old high, accompanied by a familiar wave of despair.
He blinks. Forces himself to breathe a weak and shallow breath. The air feels like mud, slow and pungent. It blocks his arteries, fills his mouth and lungs until he feels like puking. Duke smoothes down his tie with the palm of his hand. Something under it reverberates through like the echoing beat of drums. Grief and impotent rage beating right where his heart used to be.
Her being here is the last thing Duke needs right now. He’d loathe to have to make small talk with someone he knows he’ll have to pretend he doesn't know tomorrow in class.
He is afraid he'll start pouring in front of her, for he knows he'll never stop. Dreads becoming a river, especially in front of the mountain that gave him such shame.
Fears to say— I came from her. She made this body-thing I hate and love so much. I resent her for creating it; I'm mortified I have to make use of it.
Fears to say— I never felt more free. It was terrifying morphing myself into something he could stand to look at.
Everything he doesn't want to stutter his way through, he swallows, and closes his eyes."
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