50.

41.

27.

17.

A terrible night. 

A dreadfully awful, terrible night. 

Which was, Dick thought with no modicum of sympathy, relatively normal for a city such as this—Gotham reveled in disaster, as it was the one thing that pushed back the curtains of glamour and high society to reveal her true nature of destruction and comeuppance. It was truly a city of justice, though not of the kind that could be considered fair or appropriate. ‘An eye for an eye’ in Gotham was the mere minimum of what would actually be taken in recompense for any misdeeds. Situationally, what was taken in return should one spear another’s eye would statistically be, perhaps, an arm or other dangly appendages. The grime of Gotham were very cruel, indeed. A life for a life never cut it. No, there would always be suffering involved when it came to the abasement of the individuals plagued with ungainly misfortune.

While Gotham was very, very deplorable and rightfully deserving of all manner of hatred and malice, it was also very, very attracting. The glorious parties thrown by those with bursting wallets, the reputable nightlife of those with enough social graces to be considered charming, the shiny skyscrapers with their flashing lights and neon signs, the considerably awarding business opportunities—all those things were but a fraction of what gave people any sort of reason to come to Gotham in the first place. What no one was ever enlightened to upon arriving was that the corruption was not limited to only the police department. It thrived in every gritty or spotless corner that it could find a ledge to hold itself, for all the smoke and lights were just a way to hide the corruption underneath—be it in the form of a knife to a throat or a cleaned out bank account. 

There were those, of course, that fought for the city’s opposing coin-side, always reaching for the silver-lining amongst the thunderclouds and lightning. Some believed that the city could be saved, as if it were wanting of a spotless ledger. Dick understood, though. After years of poking his nose into places even coppers avoided and walking with flighty feet into all manner of side streets and alleyways, he understood. Gotham was a rusted coin stuck fast in the mud. Gotham was a piece of paper with an inkblot stained through to both sides. Gotham liked to play pretend and toy with everyone who deigned call her their city. At the end of the day, Gotham liked to be dirty. 

She let her peoples truss her up in decadence and expensive things for as long as they pleased, but every so often she would take it all down with a grand show—her ritualistic finale, as it were. The only curtain pullings Dick had lived through were having to do with Bane, but he was sure there were others. It was a strong city, at least. Always building itself back up in better and more advanced fashions. Always to ashes and dust beforehand.

Because he understood the city’s need for a blood cleansing every so often, the boy was not worried, per se, when all the lights went out. He was annoyed.

A night of cheer and free candy was ruined because some bozo had decided that it would be a good idea to destroy all the power stations in Gotham and take the city off the grid. 

Gotham was a place of dread. Happiness was bought, from boutiques and street corners and shadowed alcoves. It was never genuine, for long. Holidays were short reprieves from all the faked expressions. Thus, it was nothing short of a tragedy that someone had decided to ruin Halloween.

Either someone had a very sick sense of humor—trick or treat!—or they had no sense of propriety at all.

His day had started out quite well, in fact. He had teased Jason upon seeing him making a feast that was probably fit for the president. He had gained a few gruff and cynical laughs from Henri because of a terrible Elvis impersonation. He had carved a pumpkin. 

Then Isabel had come over and she and Jason had started getting gushy and Dick had left the house, shouting his goodbyes and see you laters. 

He’d dressed up as Jason from Friday the 13th (complete with foam machete) because he had a silly and satiric sense of humor. (He had almost painted the hockey mask red, just because, but even he thought that might have been a bit too much. Still, the look on Jason’s face might have been worth it. He would just have to do it another year, maybe.) 

He had gone out. He had walked around the neighborhoods he knew too well. Then the lights popped out all at once and he had mourned later for the screamers and the cries that he’d heard, but couldn’t save. 

That was the thing about Gotham. You couldn’t save the city and you couldn’t save her people. 

But you could try.

Dick had ditched the foam for something more substantial, a rusted and bent lead pipe, and he had tried. 

Sometime along the way, the tracking device wedged in his ever present boot-knife had been blasted out from an ill-timed EMP surge from an overzealous LexCorp grunt and the hopes of someone finding him and dragging him back to the complex were nonexistent. He had then met a man named Edward and the phone number in his cell was a warm weight in the back of his mind. There was happiness there, in a clever new face. He had found Harley Quinn wandering around. He had gone with her, against better judgement, because they were friends for odd reasons and he didn’t want her to get into any trouble. 

Which was why, after being caught at the zoo animal-napping a hyena from his confinement, he had distracted the cops long enough for Harley to get herself away. She’d practically waxed poetic about seeing Mister J again on their long walk to Gotham’s Premier Animal Emporium and he knew that her obsession with the monster-man was borderline psychotic. Harley didn’t need him in her life—no one did—and since he knew Joker was in prison, he also knew that Harley didn’t need to go there. She should go far, far away to find love in someone who was better for her. But who was he to tell her who she could and could not be around? After all, he was only a kid. What did he know? 

Which brought him to his current predicament.

After being seen being chummy with a known, insane criminal and then letting her get away and resisting arrest, he himself had been arrested. Well, he’d let himself be arrested, in any case. He had meant for the incarceration to last mere minutes, enough so that he could be sure that Harley had done what he’d suggested and exited stage right, but the cops were surprisingly, damnably competent and had not given him any chances to escape from their gunshot and donut powdered fingers. 

(On their slow way back to prison, Dick had made absolutely sure to be as annoying as possible, managing to call for a mock cease and desist over their radio system. Tussling inside a small vehicle sure had been fun! He was relatively sure that those particular boys in blue would hate him forever. Which was good. He liked that.)

So, he had to let them take him back to GCPD HQ (one of the only places in the city that was running on generators) where, after a thoroughly short questioning wherein they obtained nothing substantial besides his phone, name, and fingerprints (which was altogether quite a lot—damn them,) the (not so mildly peeved) cops had thrown him in a holding cell among several others much larger and much scarier than the brutes had any right being, because karma was no friend to mischief makers and it always bit back. His ‘insolence’ granted him the express rights to ‘hang’ with the ‘big boys’ until a time could be reached where he would ‘willingly and freely’ give the police the information they wanted and needed in order to, as they said, ‘bag and tag’ the ‘painted wench.’ 

(Dick honestly didn’t know if they wanted info on the fancy whores down on Westchester or if they meant Harley when they said that. )

He’d never been properly arrested before. He couldn’t say he enjoyed it, but it wasn’t too bad.

See, as soon as the cops had left he’d actually managed to befriend the other cell-mates through veritable expressions of both charm and wit—further silently proving (from a distance) to Eddie of the Edward sort that one could survive on both things. (He would text that to the man later, but he would conveniently forget to mention that the charm and wit came after the evasion and concession of several well-thrown punches.)

After breaking out of the cell and quietly subduing the four guards left on duty, he’d accidentally started a prison riot by letting his cell-mates out too, on sheer stupidity and faith that they weren’t going to try anything funny. One of them had picked a fight with an opposing gang member in another cell and the guy had grabbed him and bashed his face in between the bars. The resulting chaos was childish and fueled by restless muscles and a primal urge toward violence.

And while the pandemonium would have provided an excellent getaway, he hadn’t been able to leave because his conscience wouldn’t let him allow the brawlers and knife-toting thugs to get out onto the already hectic streets. 

Then the alarms had gone off in the building and induced emergency protocols, barring everyone inside. Only the missing commissioner would have the necessary codes to unlock the place.

He was irrefutably stuck in a permanently bad situation.