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Mr Appleigus

The men of the Appleigus family had a strict motto. Mr Appleigus the senior, deceased at age seventy-eight and not to be confused with his son, the current Mr Appleigus, had made a point to pass on this saying when his junior was about nine years of age and sobbing over a scraped knee, albeit a rather bad one. 

The boy had fallen from the branches of the Jacaranda tree in their front yard - not hard enough to break anything - but with enough speed and awkwardness that one of his old, gnarled ladder rungs had dug its bark deep into his skin. Perhaps it wasn’t fond of being stepped on. 

Mr Appleigus, having carried his son inside, applied rubbing alcohol and a particularly large band-aid created with the intention to either be used on a child or comically plastered on an adult en route to a hospital. 

“It’ll be alright,” the senior Appleigus had assured as he smoothed down the band-aid, “It might have cut deep, but it’ll heal. You gotta be strong, deal with a little pain & you’ll be as good as new. A little patience and a few bandaids and you’ll be able to get up from anything that doesn’t kill you.”

Mr Appleigus, the junior, had remembered and applied this advice throughout his life, from the time he turned twenty right up until his current age of fifty-nine (when he was a teenager, he could see no use for such a blindly optimistic and simple metaphor so he’d chosen to ignore it until he once again saw the pertinence of simple, blind optimism shortly following the conclusion of his school years).

He was, fifty years later, now facing a different kind of band aid.

“There’s been a significant break to the hip on the right hand side,” the doctor said to him. He’d seen her puzzling over the clipboard that held his x-ray results as she hovered just outside the door to his room. So the scans would be pretty fresh in her mind. He still found it slightly disconcerting that she felt no need to glance down at the papers.

After a brief pause, presumably to let the news sink in, she continued on, “It will require surgery. For people your age, we usually recommend a replacement. Especially with your history of problems.”

Mr Appleigus nodded. It seemed fair enough - he didn’t consider himself old, as neither he nor his brother had any sons, and only his niece was continuing the Appleigus name, he still considered himself the junior Appleigus - but a hip that didn’t ache when he walked up the stairs to his apartment would be nice.

He signed the surgical forms - if he died the doctor wasn’t responsible, he’d pay the money, in case of complication contact the other Mr Appleigus as next of kin - the usual. They kept him in the hospital for a week for the operation. The other Appleigi (a lasting family in-joke only the teller seemed to find funny) came to visit, his niece Sophie even brought him flowers. They were pretty blue ones - in a little pot so they could keep growing rather than withering in a vase.

“You can take it with you,” Sophie said practically (but not optimistically of course, she was a sweet, darling niece, but still a teenager), “When you go home.”

It seemed humans were far less cynical than hospital forms - the maths were in his favour at fifty-nine. The rising likelihood of death only kicked in during the final years of human frailty. And even then, people still expected to leave the hospital room alive.

He did manage to, of course. (It is always of course with adults in hospitals. They have too much optimism to face their own mortality. The doctors will fix it! They can fix anything!)

He had a brief recovery period and a new scar across his right side, but in return he could climb stairs without quietly nursing his ache. His perseverance could be shifted back to his work. Now he could spend perhaps a minute more shifting through financial reports than usual!

In truth, rather little changed. After a few days he stopped noticing the lack of ache. It was as if it had always been.

At the ripe old age of sixty three, Mr Appleigus decided to take up cycling again. The cause, however risky for his aging bones, was Sophie’s new habit. The darling girl had invited him to join her in cycling along the paths circling the nearby lagoons. (In truth, a series of attacks on young women had prompted her father to suggest she take a partner. He still felt honoured to be the first person she could think of willing to get up at six in the morning to cycle with a girl who kept at least one headphone in for the entire journey.)

It wasn’t the infamous attacker that caused the incident, but a rather innocent basketball. 

As the two Appleigi (Sophie smiled wryly at his nickname of Cycling Appleigings, so it seemed the family sense of humour would outlive him), had lazily made their second lap, the lull between the opening determination and final rush to the finish taking full effect, the ball had rolled across the path in the same lazy manner. The calm of the morning echoed in its slow, wobbly rolls across the uneven ground. It was easy enough to pedal around, with Mr Appleigus moving to follow Sophie’s arc with smooth, easy strokes of the leg. The clumsy child chasing it was not so predictable. They bumbled, small and quick with tunnel vision focused only on the bright orange of his plaything. While not a parent himself, Mr Appleigus had in him the same instinct found in almost every human over the age of fifteen. He saw the small, reckless child and swerved.

The bike went sideways, wheels rising violently from the tar like a wave against the coastline as his body hit the root-ridden path. The whole colossal wreck of metal and limbs fell thankfully clear of the child. Dimly he heard shouting - the cries of parents chasing their child with the same tunnel vision he had chased his ball - but it was drowned out by the sharp pain in his arm. The physical sensation tore apart any coherent sense of sound or sight beyond bright flashes of both. 

Mr Appleigus slowly regained his full ability to see and hear clearly on his route to the hospital. He found himself in a similar hospital bed to his previous visit. Though this time it was a different doctor.

“We’ve found a series of fractures up your left arm and to your shoulder,” the doctor said. This one checked the clipboard as he spoke. Perhaps he was new and nervous. Perhaps he was old to it and liked to get things right, “It needs to be reset in places. With multiple pins to keep it stable.”

Mr Appleigus nodded. He didn’t really understand anything beyond the fact that the doctor was promising him a working arm. He agreed and signed almost exact copies of the forms before. His brother and niece came to visit again - his brother apologetic that he could be injured on bike rides it was his idea he went on. (Sophie wasn’t apologetic. She would still be his favourite niece, he thought, even if he had more than one.)

While unapologetic, Sophie brought him another of the potted plants - another tiny geranium-esque flower, though this one had dark pink blooms instead of blue. 

“You can start a collection,” she shrugged, “a window box. But inside the window.” Still a teenager then, with the blunt and seemingly meaningless humour he was yet to understand. 

His arm took longer to recover from than his hip - maybe as this time it was multiple bones in multiple pieces. Still, he got back to normal eventually. And got back to his morning bike rides in no time. 

When he was sixty-five and his hands started shaking, he wondered if something went wrong with his bones. Maybe band-aid hadn’t quite covered the wound. He was surprised to learn it was Parkinson’s disease - early on-set. It always seems good to be diagnosed early, but they can’t cure it. It’s not like cancer, they can’t rip it out. All they did was medicate. 

As Mr Appleigus was coming to accept this, a doctor - this one not in a hospital room, but the office of his local practitioner - offered him a second option. A new trial surgery - one with even more forms to give the doctors deniability than usual - that will hollow out his arms, and fill them with prosthetic pieces. A few nerves replaced with tiny wires. His main joints replaced with carbon fiber copies. They said it would stop the shaking.

So he said yes.

(Sophie stopped by his apartment and brought his still-living flowers to his hospital room.) He stayed in hospital for a month, and his brother visited once a week and brought Sophie fortnightly. (She had her new university classes to juggle. Apparently first year engineering kept one very busy.)

This was the first surgery that felt different. He could not forget that his nerves were wires or joints prosthetic. He could feel them. Always. But they gave him a steady hand. He could keep working - he was reaching that ever-elusive retirement age, but he liked the money and the substance to his otherwise empty weeks. It was just a band aid that needed to stay on. But, then again, it wasn’t much different from the previous surgeries. 

He had a few more surgeries as he aged - his heart was weak, so they’d printed new arteries and added clamps to keep it’s beating stable. His lungs grew weaker, so they patched them up like sails of flesh, with the wind controlled by a sharp electric shock if they got too slow.

The doctors and their never-failing optimism kept him together with their band-aids. 

When he turned eighty-one, they told him he had Alzheimers. That he would start to forget. Not everything - and not immediately. Just that for a brief moment of time, his brother’s funeral would slip his mind. Or he might be convinced he’d eaten twice already, but actually have forgotten to all day. And of course, he’d have to stop working in the office. He didn’t really do anything there anymore apart from simple filing. But he really didn’t have much else to do.

When the doctor’s told him they could fix his brain - put his memories into a series of microchips of his most important memory and give him a RAM as stable as computers - Mr Appleigus said yes.

Despite being almost the same size as he was at fifty-nine, Mr Appleigus felt very small. Sophie still visited him when she had time - she had a job then, just like him. He learned to keep his sentences short - usually yes or no replies. She wasn’t as blunt with him as she used to be - while she pretended to understand him, he knew when she couldn’t. She might have asked him to repeat himself once or twice, but after that simply guesses.

Appleigi was too many syllables to pronounce, but after many tries Sophie smiled and he knew she understood. 

“I’ll have to bring you more flowers,” she said, noting that the old plants had finally died. He noted a niceness to her voice that hadn’t been there when she was younger - she’d started to grow up. Maybe she was already grown. His eyes were heavy. Everything dimmed. The machine memories were brighter, but the sight and sound swam past him. As if he was lying on the bicycle path again, only instead of sharp pain he was faced with a vast numbness. A letting go.

Mr Appleigus stopped noticing how his body moved. He stopped feeling the stairs beneath his feet. He stopped comprehending the files the chips in his brain and carbon fiber finger joints typed out on their own.

He didn’t notice his coworkers start to complain about a growing rancid smell. Or the putrid liquid seeping out from the gaps in his plastic skin. Or even the foul sloshing at each step. Not even the maggots wriggling between his copper nerves.

Mr Appleigus didn’t notice his niece set a pot of bright orange geraniums beside him in his favourite chair. He had no memory of turning to her, his mind sending a greeting that came out as an olid smacking of over-ripe lips.

By the time Sophie Appleigus, with a towel wrapped around her lower face and arms clad in dishwashing gloves up to her elbow, drove a screwdriver through his skull and dug through his rank, rotten brain for the chips put there when there was still something to bandage, Mr Appleigus was already long gone.

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Kalopsia

Kalopsia is born in Celesia, the city of gold. Her parents swaddle her in blankets of velvet, but only give her wooden toys. It’s tradition - to teach the people of their bountiful city humility. They grow up with everything, how else would they learn? They hold their daughter at the top of a gleaming spire and whisper stories of how the world can be hers. Of how it will be. Whether her string puller blesses her with the skills of a warrior, an artist or a tactician. One day she’ll have everything she sees before her.

When Kalopsia is four years old, they rename Celesia the Red City. People are never really sure how they came up with the name. The brutal murders of the rulers. The flames reflecting off every gilded wall. The grouting of the gold-brick roads, stained a deep crimson that never seems to wash away. Maybe a mix of them all. 

Whatever the cause, the rebels adopt it. They hang flags of red and promises of freedom to shroud the fire damage. The people who stay aren’t fooled - they do not forget easily.

Kalopsia is smuggled out of the gilded walls while the embers are still warm. Not by her parents - they’re already dead - but by some do-gooders who only partake in charity that will fill their pockets. When they realise all she’ll do is empty them, they leave her behind. 

The village she’s left in is too small to throw away enough scraps to survive on, but just large enough that no-one really cares about a tiny street urchin. She learns far too early to ration the scraps she has, and which foods to eat first from her spoil. Kalopsia can barely stomach the taste of mould the first time, but her starving belly takes it in. She worries it will fester within her - that the rot will spread through her organs and up her throat. But her only other option is to shrink down to nothing. 

Children play in the streets. They hoard their wooden knights and their bouncy balls - but they leave behind tiny shards of chalk from their drawings. The chalk can be found easily enough in plains not too far from the town, so they see no reason to scrounge up the tiny fragments. But she does.

Her fingers scrape the concrete until they’re bloody and raw, but she gets them. She curls back up in her tiny alley and drags out the largest piece - a chunk of pale, pale green. The dust covers her hands, making her look even more sickly than she is. 

She doesn’t need to ration the chalk - the other children will lose more of it soon enough. So she slides the tiny fragments along the ground  to make one tiny drawing. A flower, with petals and stem of the same pale colour. Then she lets herself drift off to sleep against the wall of some family’s house - huddled against it as if she might feel the warmth of their fire through the stone. She wakes shivering surrounded by the pale grey of the early dawn to the brush of green petals against her cheek. The flower she drew stands fragile and sprightly in a newly formed crack in the concrete.  

That night Kalopsia takes up the chalk again and draws a large green oval, the same shape as the baker’s warm, morning loaves. She wakes to a scent that has haunted her dreams and scoffs down the mucus-coloured bread with disbelief. Today, she knows, is the last day she need go hungry.

Kalopsia spends months like this - drawing her meals and gorging herself on as many different tastes and flavours she can think of. She grows healthier and happier and no longer stalks the villagers for their leftovers. The villagers start to watch her then, this girl who has been left with nothing for so long, abandoned by the weaver of her fate, and start to whisper. Thief, some say. Spy, whisper others. Witch, mutter the rest. 

Witch who eats the air, who feeds on the future days of their children, who whores her brain to the minds of wolves and gobbles down their thoughts. 

It does not take long for one of them, a woodcutter goaded by her friends, to follow the girl. To stalk her footsteps and watch for her misdeeds. To watch her huddled sleeping against the wall next to a chalk drawing of roast pork. And to then, in the early hours of the morning, to let out yells of shock and flee to the main road, away from the young girl and her witchcraft. 

Kalopsia wakes not to the smell of roast pork, but that of burning wood and the clatter of pitchforks. She gathers up her pitiful collection of things - her chalk shards and a warm blanket they had created - and in confusion she seeks out the cause of the raucous. She doesn’t know it’s her. Not until the people she comes across start pointing. Yelling. So much noise. Kalopsia does not know why these people are chasing her, just that she needs to run. She vanishes into the trees and the torches follow. All around her as she runs are the shadows of hideous claws and gnashing teeth. They are terrifying. The monsters the other children talked and laughed and whispered about had found her. They were going to rip to shreds and squabble and tear at her pieces to see who would get their fill. 

Kalopsia ducked down into a rocky crevice, curling up as far from the shadowy beasts as she could get. Her hands scrabbled for her chalk pieces. If there were monsters that wished to hurt her, she would make one to defend herself. In the dark, she scribbled frantically - copying down claws and fangs and spikes. Her monster must be enough to frighten all the others combined. When she is done, she huddles beneath her blanket and squeezes her eyes shut as hard as she can. 

When the screaming starts she covers her ears too. 

That morning Kalopsia opens her eyes to a red-soaked forest. The only cooked meat she can smell makes her want to vomit. And there are no children left to steal chalk from. 

On the other side of the village, a trail through the forest is gaping. Trees scratched into splinters and the dirt gouged deep by claws. In the distance she can see smoke. 

This time Kalopsia knows what she’s running from. This time she runs faster. 

She treks East, to the edge of the chalk plains - the place where tall, flat mountains rise up to catch snow upon their peaks. When she’s there she finds a cavern, a booming space with barely enough light for her to see her first drawing. A fire, with blue flames, that fills the space with a strange, eerie light. She draws a pantry full of food and a bed made of flowers. Kalopsia draws a home for herself deep in the mountains. Hidden from her birth city. Hidden from the villagers. And hidden from the monster she created. But not hidden from the weaver of her fate. The mischievous and tragic weaver watched her flight. And waited.

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I Have A Hero Whenever I Need One

Bruce watched his parents die when he was twelve. People said it was a tragedy - and it was. But that doesn’t mean his life was. He had Alfred, a man who cared for him more than any amount of money could compel someone to. Alfred drops him off at school, talks with him over meals and helps out with school projects last minute. Many blood parents of his school-mates do far less. 

It’s under his tutelage Bruce thrives. He teaches him languages, business skills, fighting styles. Everything Alfred learned in the secret service, and anything they can figure out together, they learn.

Bruce grows up loved and happy and successful.

It’s then, after delving deep into his parent’s company he learns of the limits they met - the ones that probably got them killed. A business - even one as large as Wayne Enterprises - can only do so much. They’re bound by laws and codes - ones put there for good reason, but still hindering any efforts to reform the city and take criminals off the streets.

At this point, Bruce only gets the first inklings of what he has to do - that he will need to move out of the public eye and fight Gotham’s crime in an arena outside of his company. He starts to get a reputation, not with the law, but with the papers. He needs Bruce Wayne to be completely open, his life spotlighted so that no one would ever believe he could be planning something more serious. And the best way to get the paper’s attention is a scandal. 

Sex is the easiest avenue, and while its pretty clear to Bruce that its not as enjoyable for him as it is for others - he feels no particular compulsion to seek it out beyond making the gossip pages. He has other things to keep his mind on. (Bruce makes sure none of the girls ever think he’ll love them. It’s just a basic courtesy, but also helps nourish the growth of his bad reputation.)

Wayne Enterprises makes the leap from successful to infallible due to what is arguably the biggest break in Bruce’s business career. He manages to hire the highly sought-after Lucius Fox - colloquially known in the upper-business circles as having the Midas Touch - who can make any business, no matter how small or how deep in remission, a resounding financial success. 

Bruce greets Mr. Fox in his office, eager to see the commerce wizard in person and glean his thoughts. Mr. Fox himself is rather humble looking, a small black man with silver wire-rimmed glasses and short-cropped black hair. He wears a tweed suit and red bow-tie: the kind of outfit one can only picture older British men and professors in. 

Bruce decided it must be the latter as the man said in a strong New Jersey accent, “Good to meet you, Mr Wayne.”

“Good to meet you too, Mr Fox,” Bruce replies as the man settles into the seat on the other side of Bruce’s desk.

“Now, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius starts, “I’m sure you’re aware I’ve got a few job offers at the moment. Why should I pick Wayne Enterprises?”

Bruce cracks a smile, “More than a few probably. And you should pick Wayne Enterprises because we’re doing a lot of good for this city-”

“How?” Lucius interrupts him, and at Bruce’s briefly startled face expands, “I apologise for my abruptness, but if I did detailed research into everyone contacting me at the moment I wouldn’t ever get to the actual interviews. I’ll look at the more intriguing offers in more detail after I’ve heard them out.”

“Seems efficient,” Bruce answers. And he supposes it is the only practical for someone that sought after. He’s reminded exactly how large a juggernaut he has in his office. 

“Well, for the city we have the Wayne scholarships, our homeless hiring initiative and consistent proposals for Gotham’s development to work with the mayor’s office to make the city more prosperous. And of course we offer fair pay and decent hours to all our employees. For you, I have a branch planned where you can head the development and testing of technological products. I’d be loosely supervising, but it would be you leading the team. It comes with a board membership and the salary of one. Any other questions?”

Mr. Fox smiles at his efficiency, “No, I think that’s enough for me to consider. If I need anything, I’ll be in touch.”

Two weeks later, Lucius Fox calls back to accept the offer. The board toasts champagne at the news. 

Mr. Fox and carefully selected staff members move into complex in the warehouse district filled with all the specialist equipment Mr. Fox can think of. It’s at this time Bruce makes a few purchases of his own - its out of his own pocket of course, but it’s a good excuse if anyone asks why a playboy billionaire needs kevlar body armour and workable leather. (Bruce decides not to simply order specialised pieces, but to learn how to make them. He wants to be untraceable.)

Alfred knows everything of course, and while he doesn’t fully understand why Bruce wants to dress up in a suit and fight criminals in person, he does everything he can to support him. (Except allow him to pull more than one-all nighter or skip one too many meals. “It’ll still be there in the morning, Master Bruce. And you’ll work faster if you’re not completely exhausted.”)

Bruce never really finishes the suit, he keeps finding different ways to upgrade it, to make this more pliable or that more sturdy, but he gets the first chance to use it when he hears that a partner in a rival company, Mr. Theodore Lambert, has been stabbed to death. 

It’s the secretaries that know first - it almost always is. There’s about a dozen of them in the Wayne’s main building and each knows at least three others from their many attempts to get their bosses talking at a convenient time. So when Lisa from Apex Chemical Corporation calls Rob from marketing to tell him about Lambert’s death it doesn’t take long for the whole building to know.

 Bruce leaves work early (one of the perks of being his own boss) and stops by the commissioner's office. Gordon’s an old friend, met when he failed to find the man who killed Bruce’s parents. (Bruce has long ago decided not to track him down himself. If he’s a criminal, he’ll come up against him eventually and put him behind bars. Bruce is a man of obsessions, and he doesn’t want to test how thick the line between justice and vengeance really is.) Tragic circumstances, good friend.

“You can’t tell the papers any of this yet,” Gordon says seated behind his desk, “Or god forbid use the information for a business deal. Not only will I stop telling you stuff, I’ll have you in a cell so fast…”

Bruce had ignored the other chairs in the office to sit on the edge of the desk itself. Relaxed, rascally, child-like bordering on disrespectful. It fit his image to any number of outsiders. And Gordon himself simply acted as if he was a slightly adventurous nephew.

The commissioner was an older man, with white hair streaking from his hairline back across his scalp. He wore a scratchy, budget suit and dull green tie, both pressed and clean, as perfectly in order as everything else Gordon did. 

“When have I ever?” Bruce asks innocently, “But in all seriousness, should I be worried about a serial killer targeting big company members?”

He says this with a smile that tells Gordon he’s anything but serious.

“No, you’re safe to live another day,” Gordon acquiesces, “The officers think its Lambert’s son - fingerprints on the knife. He claims different, so I’m having them check out the partners-”

“Crane, Stryker and Rogers,” Bruce remembers aloud. 

“Those are the ones.” There’s an edge to Gordon’s eyes now that Bruce believes are there to warn him against interfering. But the suit in the back of his car out front pushes him in another direction. 

Bruce gets back into the car out front and drives a few blocks away before he turns on his radio. He’s set it up to pick up police transmissions, which was one of the first skills Alfred had taught him. He sits and listens, not knowing if he’ll step in yet. It’ll be his first appearance as the Batman, he needs to keep it as clean-cut and efficient as he can. There’s some general chatter, dispatchers sending cops out for noise complaints and possible robberies. A nice reminder of Gotham’s crime. He doesn’t need to wait long. 

“Dispatch, we have a possible homicide. Send Alvarez out, pretty sure it’s Steven Crane. Looks like it’s part of the Lambert case.”

Bruce is driving  before they finish the report. He knows where each of their offices are, and Rogers is the closest. He parks a block away and considers whether or not to wear the costume. He could simply walk in as Bruce Wayne and inquire about Rogers. It’d cause the least suspicion. But if he walked in on a fight or a crime scene, he wouldn’t be able to step in without giving himself away. And of course, if word got back to Gordon he was here, he could lose the trust of one of his oldest friends and accidental informant. 

It’s that that decides it for him, more than anything. He pulls the suit on in the back of the car, fumbling with the confined space. Bruce supposes he’ll just have to get better at it. 

Rogers has an office in a new office building - glass walls stretching up with nowhere to hide. He could still climb it, but the windows would be sealed all the way up. The easiest way in would be the roof, which meant fourteen storeys would have watched him crawl past, belly bared to all inside. Ground floor, then. But at least he can take a back door. 

Bruce finds it slightly embarrassing, he imagines this must be what it feels like to be a teenager sneaking in drunk hoping not to be caught in a parent’s disapproving stare. He has no personal experience doing this, for a number of reasons. (Apart from the obvious, he tends to avoid drinking to get drunk and Alfred would rather he just uses the front door so he can ensure Bruce is safe. Even as a fully grown adult.)

He makes it up to Rogers’ floor unchallenged, although he does note a security he makes an appearance on. It doesn’t matter to him then, he’s in a mask, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Bruce makes a note to figure something out for next time. (He optimistically assumes there will be a next time.)

The door to Roger’s office is open, and Bruce can see its empty even from the shadowy corner by the door. Roger’s secretary, a tall brown-haired woman with thick black glasses and a stylish crimson shirt, is sitting at her desk in front of the empty office absorbed in her computer. The best source of information - secretaries hear about everything.

He’s standing right in front of her desk before she acknowledges his presence.

“Can I help you?” She asks, eyes raking over his suit with silent judgement.

“I’m looking for Paul Rogers,” Bruce growls out. It’s harsh and grating where his normal voice is warm and playful. Ideally unrecognisable.

“Ok,” she says, now ignoring the screen in front of her, “And you are..?”

Batman. He wants to say it. He’s been planning it since he was fourteen years old and bats were the scariest thing to him. It feels kind of childish, but still scarier than something like institutionalised-prejudice-man or dying-alone-and-being-eaten-by-cats-man. Still, maybe it would be a good idea if he actually solved a case before spreading the name.

“Who I am doesn’t matter,” Bruce continues, “I just need to find Paul Rogers.”

“‘Kay,” she says in bewilderment, “He’s not here. He went to visit a business partner: Alfred Stryker.”

“Thank you,” he says, still growling. Not intimidating, he tells himself immediately. He’ll get the hang of it.

“‘Kay,” the secretary says again, turning back to her screen. He knows by the time he leaves the building secretaries all across the city are getting of the alerts of the strange costumed man looking for Paul Rogers.

He drives to Stryker’s office, cowl down and suit covered by a long coat. His cape is tied around his waist - a part of him thinks its childish, another, smarter part knows it masks some of his body type, movements and hides any special gadgets. If anyone stopped him now, it’d be extremely suspicious. He needs a vehicle, he realises, something that won’t link back to Bruce Wayne so he won’t have to change back and forth. 

Bruce pulls into an alley near Stryker’s office - this one is in a sprawling old building, with cut stone walls and only three storeys, so he doesn’t need to repeat the back stairwell routine. He remembers from his corporate briefings that this is because Stryker likes to keep a personal eye on the manufacturing of Apex’s heavy-duty industrial strength chemicals, primarily used as extreme sterilization or to be watered down to at-home cleaning solutions.

Cowl on, he climbs to the third storey window roughly where he remembers Stryker’s office being. As he jimmies open the lock, he hears voices yelling from the next room. 

“What the hell? What are you doing!” comes the first voice, and despite its panic, Bruce recognises it as Rogers.

“Just shut up,” hisses the second voice. Not Stryker, Bruce notes. 

 He (gracefully) crawls over the window into the deserted room beyond, staggering to his feet and darting into the building’s main corridor. He moves quickly and quietly along it, with all the grace of someone well-practiced in sneaking midnight snacks around an ex-MI6 agent, until he finds the right doorway. He pauses on the threshold and takes in the scene - not panicking, he’s learned, is far more important to remember than most of his learned skills. A second of recon can make or break his success. 

Inside the room, Rogers is taped to a chair, with another burlier man looming over him with more tape and a plastic bag attached to an air hose. Next to them is a canister of helium. 

“It won’t even hurt,” the larger man says, “Way more humane than being stabbed.”

This does not seem to reassure Rogers, who continues to struggle to keep the bag from being placed over his head. Bruce decides this is a good time to step in.

“Get away from Mr Rogers,” he says, crossing the threshold. The big man whirls to face him, abandoning Rogers.

He looks Bruce’s costume up and down, brow furrowing. “You’re that guy,” he says, and Bruce tenses, “The weirdo who was looking for Rogers.”

An assistant then, if he’d already heard about that.

“I’m here!” Rogers helpfully yells from behind the assistant.

Bruce pulls a pair of handcuffs from his belt, “Surrender yourself to the police.”

The assistant looks unconvinced, “I’m not going to hand myself in because some goth vampire dude-”

“Batman,” Bruce interrupts, purely because he would rather not have people call him Goth-vampire-man.

“Whatever,” the man says exasperated and then lunges forwards. Bruce sidesteps, bringing his elbow down hard against the assistant’s back and sending him crashing to the floor. Before he can get his bearings, Bruce has him pinned and is cuffing his hands behind his back. He drags the assistant to a radiator and uses a second pair of cuffs to lock him in place.

Rogers looks on in shock. “Batman,” he says testing it out, “Cool name. I like it. The whole thing: great-”

He’s interrupted by a voice from down the hallway, “Jennings? Is it done?”

Rogers looks over panicked at Bruce. “That’s Stryker,” he whispers frantically, “And it’s not done. I’m not done. Completely not done.”

Bruce raises a hand to quiet him, then slips behind the door. He’s not giving up the element of surprise.

“Jennings?” Stryker’s voice is closer this time, almost right outside. “What’s-”

Bruce can tell the moment Stryker reaches the doorway because he breaks off mid sentence. It’s then that Bruce launches himself at the place he knows Stryker will be standing. Bruce catches a glimpse of him before he makes impact, built more slender than Jennings and eyes wide with surprise. But where Jennings had confidence, Alfred Stryker has wit and wariness and speed. He launches himself down the hall, leaving Bruce clutching at the coat ripped from his shoulders. Bruce curses under his breath, abandoning the coat and racing after Stryker.

The man in question has reached a heavy looking door emblazoned with warning signs with phrases such as ‘Extreme Caution’ and ‘Chemical Storage’. Stryker’s frantically pushing his passcode into a security matrix beside the door and Bruce knows if Stryker gets the door closed behind him he’ll probably get away. 

The door opens and Stryker hurries inside. Bruce slams into the closing door, bracing himself on the carpeted hallway to keep it open. He knows he’s stronger than Stryker, and sure enough the door starts to inch further and further open. 

Stryker must know it too, because he abandons the door, using the Bruce’s stumble as the door unexpectedly gives way to get a headstart along the narrow metal catwalks that hang across this section. Beneath them, Bruce can see large open vats full of steaming liquids that slowly eddy and bubble as they continue mixing. 

The catwalk shakes as the two sprint across it, and a flash of fear runs through Bruce at the thought of it breaking. Who knows what raw chemicals would do to a man?

Stryker seems to be tiring, slowing slightly and failing to pick up speed again after a sudden ninety-degree turn. Bruce runs farther than this on a daily basis and shows absolutely no signs of fatigue. He gains quickly on Stryker until he’s within arms reach. Bruce launches forward grabbing firmly onto Stryker’s shoulder. Still desperate to escape, Stryker jerks violently to the right, hitting the narrow metal railing hard. 

For a moment he flails wildly. Arms in the air. His feet leave the catwalk. The swirling pale green vat beneath them bubbles invitingly.

Then Bruce’s instincts kick in. He grabs Stryker by the arm and pulls him back from the edge. By the time Stryker’s panicked breathing returns to normal, Bruce has already handcuffed both of hands to the railing.

“The police will be here shortly,” Bruce informs him, then heads back the way he came to release Rogers. 

Later that night, Bruce sits beside Alfred on a plush leather couch at Wayne Manor and watches a news report of the mysterious black-clad figure dubbed ‘The Batman’ who foiled a murder attempt. Paul Rogers raves praises for his actions to a reporter. It’s a good first step.

Strangely enough, Bruce isn’t the first person go sneaking through the city in black leather. As he continues his crime-fighting escapades he runs into a kindred spirit - albeit one that’s a little less into the law upholding aspect. 

He first sees the woman scaling up the side of an expensive apartment block. Gotham’s latest luxury living project for millionaires looking to downsize their older relatives. Bruce would usually be inclined to think this is another run-of-the-mill thief with a leather fetish, but the suit’s very similar to his. Ears on the cowl, utility belt - all its missing is a cape. He watches from a neighbouring building as she disables an alarm system and slips in a window - and yes, maybe he could report her, but he’s never seen anyone work with this level of efficiency and he’s new to patrolling rooftops so he’s pretty sure she’d easily outmaneuver him. She sees him as she’s slipping out the window again, probably a few thousand dollars better off than when she entered, and for a moment they both freeze. 

Bruce points to a neighbouring rooftop adjacent to both of them in what he hopes is a nonthreatening manner. I just want to talk, he tries to convey. Whatever he does with his arms somehow communicates enough to convince the woman to move towards the rooftop. Either because she’s curious too or to tell him to leave her the hell alone.

She’s a better climber than he is, he notes. Far more practiced. 

He can see her more clearly when she’s on the rooftop, her cowl covers all her main features and hair like his, and her suit’s clearly hand-stitched. It’s tight too, and Bruce realises that and the lack of cape probably allows her to better squeeze through tiny windows and openings to steal. She’s quite short, with a small build like that of an acrobat and scowling slightly.

“I suppose you’re this new Batman person,” she says by way of introduction.

“And you are?” Bruce asks.

“People call me Catwoman,” she answers, “But you don’t really need to call me anything. Just stay out of my way.”

“I just watched you steal from that apartment right there-”

“Yeah, steal,” she breaks in, “I’m not hurting anyone. The ultra-rich can live without a few pieces of jewellery Surely you’ve got better things to do. I don’t like getting into moral fights, go stop the people from raping and murdering in back-alleys. Then I’ll be able to focus on stealing rather than dropping into fights all the time.”

Bruce really can’t fault her logic too much. She does need to stop stealing stuff eventually, but he can’t stop every crime in the city. He doesn’t get the chance to tell her this though, as she darts off the side of the building and onto a fire-escape Bruce didn’t even know was there. 

An ally, Bruce thinks, albeit a reluctant one. If he ever gets out of his depth, he’s pretty sure this Catwoman would help him against someone truly evil. 

Two weeks later, Bruce hosts a Wayne Enterprises gala at his manor and among the guests he notices a small woman with curly brown hair he doesn’t remember inviting. He watches her as she slips through the crowd in a long purple dress and while he never sees her take anything, when he runs into her conversation partners they’re missing cuff-links and earrings and watches that they’re yet to notice have vanished. 

Bruce waits until she’s alone beside a table stacked with champagne before approaching. 

“Hey,” he says wearing the smile he reserves specifically for these events - it’s not quite the playboy on the front of magazines but also not an expression he’d ever use when it was just him and Alfred.

The woman looks over at him and smiles. It doesn’t show her teeth. Bruce notices her lips are painted the same shade of purple as her dress.

“So,” he continues, “Taking a break from theft?”

She laughs, light and short as if he’s just said something extraordinarily funny, “Theft? Let me guess; I’m stealing hearts.” She’s incredibly charming and for a moment Bruce thinks he might be wrong, and maybe this really isn’t the same woman he met on the roof at night. 

“Perhaps.” He offers her his hand to shake. “I’d stay out of your way,” a flicker of recognition flashes through her eyes, (they’re brown. He didn’t notice that in the dark.) “but I’m the host so I kind of have to greet everyone.”  

“So you’re the Batman,” she says, “Mr Wayne?”

He nods, “And you’re the Catwoman, Ms..?

“Kyle,” she answers, “Selina Kyle. I should probably give this back.” 

Selina hands him his own watch. (He’s suitably impressed.)

They spend the next thirty minutes gossiping about the other guests, with Bruce steering her clear of certain people - the Cobbs, who’ve just had their son die and should really be allowed to grieve, others like him who wear their dead father’s watch on their wrists like a catholic wears a cross - and which people just got found not-guilty of embezzlement on technicalities.

“This has been very educational Mr. Wayne,” she says. 

“Bruce,” he corrects immediately.

“Bruce,” she amends, “But I have to get back to meeting those guests you pointed out.”

She slips away into the crowd and Bruce thinks that maybe Gotham’s new vigilante now has a friend. (He finds Alfred later and tells him to invite one Selina Kyle to all Wayne events henceforth. She may be a thief, but Alfred’s just thrilled he has a friend.)

As Bruce keeps patrolling the city at night, his list of needed gadgets keeps growing. Some of them he and Alfred can figure out together in the old cavern beneath the manor where Bruce stores all of his Batman-related possessions. (Alfred’s setting up a computer system to combine the hacked files of different police departments and emergency services. A sort of overhaul database with all the information stored in one place.) Other things are beyond even them, but Bruce knows exactly where to turn. (At least after extensive background checks and many pros versus cons discussions with Alfred.)

Lucius Fox (graduated MIT, top of his class, wife: Tanya, four children in various stages of schooling) seems to have enjoyed his transition to Wayne Enterprises. The sprawling laboratory is filled with various gadgets and engineers of all kinds flitting from table to table talking of different ideas. 

“Mr Fox,” Bruce greets him, taking a seat opposite the man in his office, “I have another proposition for you.”

Lucius looks at Bruce over his glasses and says, “Go on.”

After a lengthy discussion ends in an optimistic, “I’ll consider it”, Alfred convinces Bruce to take the night off. 

“You’ve made excellent headway, Bruce,” Alfred says. They’ve long forgone the master, “Why not a night to celebrate?”

Bruce gives in, because it’s not just a night off for him, it’s one for Alfred too. And in between late nights preparing the new computer system for the cave and insisting Bruce get more sleep, Alfred’s read raving reviews about one Haly’s Circus that’s travelling around America. Alfred’s always harboured a soft spot for carnivals since his childhood novel heroes all talked about running away to join one.  

Bruce goes with him, with slightly less excitement but a willingness to relax. For the first half it’s as entertaining as Alfred promised, with aerial silks, a strongman, clowns. Then the trapezists are brought on. ‘The Flying Graysons’ the ringleader announces gesturing to a family of three. There’s a man and a woman and a young boy who sports the woman’s dark hair and the man’s bright blue eyes. 

They perform without a net, to raise the stakes. The audience holds its breath and wait to see if they’ll slip up, be off by a few centimetres and be sent plummeting to the floor far below. They don’t miss, they fly from one trapeze to the other with perfect flips that make them look as if they’re flying.

Then something above them snaps and they fall anyway. The man and the woman are both lying on the floor of the ring, limbs at wrong angles while the boy swings above, looking down on them in disbelief. 

It’s a while before someone remembers to convince him to come down. 

Bruce leaves with the rest of the crowd, but he doesn’t sleep at all that night. He keeps picturing the kid hanging onto the trapeze and looking down at the floor. At 3am, he can’t take it anymore and calls Gordon.

“Is it an emergency?” Gordon answers sleepily.

“No,” Bruce says, “It’s about the Haly’s Circus accident.”

“A 3am worthy question?”

Bruce sighs, “I was there, Jim.”

“Oh,” there’s a moment of rustling as Gordon presumably moves to a better location for a serious dead of night phone call, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Bruce answers him, “Just...what’s going to happen to the kid?”

“The circus can’t provide the right education, financial security or stability to officially adopt him, so he’s being sent to Gotham foster care so they can find him a home.”

Bruce remembers the feeling of not-knowing. But at least he’d had Alfred. This boy has no one. (Bruce asks himself who the greatest hero he knows is. The answer isn’t Batman, or Silena or Fox or Gordon. His biggest hero is Alfred, and he knows right now that the boy from the circus is in exactly the same position he was in. And he needs a hero.)

“I’ll take him.”

[greenhanded-redthumbed]

Just A Small Town Boy

Clark grew up with his parents telling him how he fell from the sky. He wouldn’t believe them if it hadn’t been for the other things: that he’s strong enough to lift a tractor, that he can start a fire a hundred metres away with just his eyes, that he can fly. They tell him that he’s a miracle child: a gift. And that everything he can do just makes him more perfect, even if they have to hide them away for now. 

Not yet, they insist, they’re not ready for you yet. 

He accepts it, practicing to control his powers at night in the field next to their house. He wades through the wheat stalks that rise to his shoulders and is careful not to face anything important (he’d accidentally demolished far too many walls growing up, and even though his parents were more than happy to keep up with the continuous renovations, he still tries his best to keep everything in one piece). He learns to avoid certain bright lights that bring about a burning in the back of his eyes, to keep headphones with him for when his hearing runs rampant picking up anything said for miles and to always have an elastic around his wrist to keep him present and remind him to use human strength rather than super strength. (The Kents have an entire draw devoted to the elastics and other such trinkets ready for them to give way).

Clark’s gotten better at controlling his powers over the years, with the reports of alien sightings around Smallville dropping as he gets older. But he can’t stay forever.

He loves his parents dearly - loves the farm too, it’s the only home he’s ever known. And as much as he’d love to stay here, he can’t. He can do things no one else can, he can help people no one else can. But there’s not that many people in Smallville, and not much to save them from.

So he leaves, heads to the big city to pursue a career in journalism (because how else is he going to know who’s in trouble). Clark considers working with the police, but a quick read of the papers tells him of the high levels of corruption - all of them probably aren’t bad, but Clark has never been good at reading people and thinks he’s better safe than sorry.

His spotless record, good grades and glowing letters from his high school teachers is enough to land him an internship at one of the bigger newspapers in the city. The Daily Planet.

Clark turns up for his first day bright eyed, watching the chattering reporters move around the cubicles on the office floor - some darting forward with bundles of papers in their arms as they reach a breakthrough while others meander slowly and chatter greetings to their coworkers.

He doesn’t know what he expected - certainly not his own office and free reign, but maybe something more than cramped square metre cubicle with a desk crammed in (the walls of the cubicle barely reach his ears so the full-time, seasoned journalists can see if there’s someone to make coffee for them). 

Occasionally, someone drops off a list of some kind for him to grab files on:

“I need the profit margins of these companies on my desk by six”

“Can you get the M.P.D crime stats to me by this afternoon?”

“I want you to pull up all our previous stories on the mayor and check what our bias is.”

It’s not exactly saving anyone, but it’s a foothold as a journalist. He’ll get there. 

And he does - after a few months or so of perfecting his coffee-making skills and navigating the achingly slow computer he’s been given, a file is dropped unceremoniously into his cubicle. Clark pulls the headphones from his ears, letting the office chatter settle around him and turns to see one of the reporters looking down at him. The dark-skinned man would be shorter than him if he was standing, bulky and dressed in a neat, navy suit - Clark recognises him instantly as one of the more senior reporters.

“What do you need Mr. White?” Clark asks, one hand moving to fiddle nervously at the hair at the nape of his neck. It’s the latest manifestation of his fiddling - he doesn’t have his parents stockpile of rubber bands and always seems to lose them in the mess of his tiny desk. 

Mr. White, Perry as Clark recalls, “I want you to write this report. Twelve lines. Puff piece: local orphanage.” 

“Write a- write a report?” Clark stutters, surprised it’s not just another files request.

“Yes, Kent,” Perry White says slowly and Clark jumps at his own name, “You do want to be a reporter, don’t you?”

“Y-yes, of course,” Clark stammers, pulling the paper-thin file closer, “I’ll get on this right away, sir.”

“I’m not ‘sir’, Kent. Not yet anyway,” Perry says turning away. He calls back, “On my desk, tomorrow at five.” Clark’s too nervous to remember he doesn’t know which desk is Perry’s. He supposes he’ll just have to work it out when he comes to it.

As he goes to open the file, he notices a face watching him over the cubicle divider. A fellow intern, with long black hair and pale blue eyes that make her features seem sharper. Colder. Like she could open her mouth and freeze him to the core.

“Um, hi?” he starts, “We haven’t met, I’m Clark-”

She cuts him off. “A newbie.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s not wrong or particularly rude. Just matter-of-fact in a way his southern hospitality hadn’t prepared him for. 

“Yes, a newbie-” He replies with a grin. She cuts him off again by picking up the file from Perry and flipping it open. 

“What are you doing?” Clark questions, hoping he’s not going to end up in a fist fight with a fellow intern for this story. 

“Just checking this out, don’t worry,” she mumbles preoccupied scanning through the loose sheets, “I’m making sure the big dogs aren’t screwing me over.”

She looks up at him and her face briefly contorts into a smile - not a warm one, a happy one. A cold, practiced greeting to show no harm done, a I don’t mean to be a weirdo going through your files I’m actually a rational and normal person kind of smile. “But Perry’s right, this is a bludge.”

“Okay?” Clark replies, honestly confused by the whole interaction more than anything, “Well, it was nice meeting you Ms…”

“Lane,” she answers him, “Lois Lane, the top intern. That’s not an official term, but it’s the truth.”

He offers her a smile and a nod before turning his attention back to the file that has once again been dropped on his desk. It’s only two loose sheets, almost no info and a basic piece. But at least it’s him who’ll be writing it. One step at a time.

(When it’s printed in the lower corner of page twelve two days later, he cuts it out and sends it back home to Kansas. Ma and Pa are deliriously proud and request copies of all future articles. He doesn’t find out until Christmas that they’ve turned one of their walls into a display for his published pieces.)

Three weeks after his first article, a new intern moves into the cubicle next to him. (Ms Lane’s now one of the people bringing bludge stories and requests to his desk. She must have been right about being top intern). The new intern, Ms Lang, is a city girl. Born and raised in Metropolis. But she has a warmth that reminds him of home. Warm brown skin and wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes that seem to shine when she smiles.

He’s more than a bit enraptured. 

She leans over half way through her first day to talk to him. “So, how long have you been an intern here?”

He grins back and the office fluorescents suddenly shift to the warm summer sun reflected off the wheat fields. “Almost five months now.” 

“Huh, good to know,” she replies and he notices her nails are painted the same shade of pink as her dress. 

“Why’s that?” he asks before she can disappear back into her cubicle.

“Because on my tour round here I heard you were the new top intern. And I want to get there faster than you.” Then she’s gone, back to becoming the hardest working journalist of Metropolis.

It took Clark a moment to let her words sink in. He knew the Daily Planet requires journalists to show their replacements around. He cranes his head over the wall of his cubicle and catches sight of Ms Lane on the other side of the floor. She’s arguing with a colleague over something or other and doesn’t so much as glance at him. It’s kind of surprising that she thinks so highly of him. It’s also kind of the best.

It’s around this time he makes his first appearance as superman. He puts on the suit his father left him (the one Pa and Ma kept for him until he turned sixteen) and sets out to help people. It’s strange, giving in to the sounds and sights and smells he’s been blocking out all his life. He can hear the whole city buzzing beneath him as he floats above it, tuning in and out of conversations like a radio.

He decides to start small - he picks cats out of trees, clears trees off of roads and flies the dying to the hospital at super speed. An alien in primary colours zipping around the city catches the attention of the Daily Planet pretty quickly. He reads the article one of the reporters, Mr John Corben, writes on him and is happy to see it’s mostly good (wary, but still praising his actions).

Clark steps up his attempts at heroism - he now shows up to confront active shooters and floats above witnesses for particularly nasty cases. Praise starts getting thrown his way, with t-shirts and fan-blogs. They treat him like a celebrity.

Then his first supervillain arrives. He calls himself the Ultra-humanite and the papers obligingly print it in their headlands ‘Superman vs Ultra-humanite: Shocking Defeat for the Man of Steel’. The Ultra-humanite - Clark doesn’t even know his real name - isn’t like the regular street thugs and gun-wielding cowards. He can’t match Clark physically, so he does it mentally. He outsmarts Clark at every turn with automations and traps and a thousand other misdirections. 

The Ultra-humanite also introduces Clark to a new weakness: a small, almost fluorescent green rock he calls Kryptonite. It leaves him weak and dizzy. All the hyperawareness sinking away as the world dulls and blurs. He can safely say he doesn’t like it.

It dawns on him that he’ll need help. So he turns to the person he thinks he can trust. 

“Right,” Lana says slowly as he hovers in front of her, work shirt unbuttoned to show his famous emblem, “So you’re the superman with the superpowers who wants help taking down a supervillain. Super.” 

“You don’t have to be apart of the fighting or anything,” he assures her, “I just need a plan or something to get the upper hand on him.”

They’re on the roof of the Daily Planet. It’s the only place he could think of that wouldn’t have security cameras or be too suspicious to visit. Enough people still smoke to make it an acceptable break spot.

“You want me to outsmart a supervillain. Outsmart a supersmart evil genius supervillain.”

“Or help, just offer any insight,” Clark says, bringing himself back to the floor and doing up his shirt. That seems to calm Lana down, and she tilts her head slightly, gazing dazedly out at the horizon

It takes her a minute, but when she looks at him again he knows he made the right decision to come to her. “So he’s found ways to outsmart all your super powers.” Lana starts slowly, “Because he studied Superman.”

“I guess so,” Clark says.

“So,” Lana continues, “Use your abilities as Clark Kent. The ones he doesn’t know about. Track him down in his lair like a reporter - with paper trails and good old investigation.”

He does, tracks down all the stores that sell the fancy equipment the Ultra-humanite - a man, Clark learns through his investigation, who is called by the far-less threatening name of Gerard Shugel - and traces the sales back to accounts and addresses. 

He finds Shugel’s lair, crashing in dressed in full Superman regalia to see that very man tinkering on his next trap. It’s easy for Clark to apprehend him on his own turf. Just carrying him to the police station and leaving his address for them to search through. Clark was raised to believe that everything gets easier with practice, so he knows he’ll be ready for the next supervillain to threaten his city. And he knows he has someone to turn to when he gets out of his depth. 

 After a year of intern work, Clark finally gets a position as a full-blooded journalist. (Investigative, which is the same department as Ms. Lane. There are some whispers going around that two newbies handling a department is risky business, but those are shut down by an icy blue glare.)

They work side by side in matching offices, with Clark dibsing the police corruption case. (Which Ms. Lane thinks is undignified but lets him have it so she can keep working on her inquiring into the company practices of one of Metropolis’ largest businesses. Something called Lexcorp.)

Lana inherits the role of top intern, a placement which Clark confidently informs his replacement of. He knows it’s not long until she’s on the detective side of the office and looks forward to it.

He knows that the people are ready for him now. And more importantly, he’s ready for them.