Batman: The Blind Cut
Torn and Restored
K Arsenault Rivera
He was Bruce Wayne.
So he told himself. Those were Bruce Wayne’s brows, and Bruce Wayne’s lips, and Bruce Wayne’s scars below the collar. Those bags beneath his eyes—concealed so skillfully whenever he attended an event—were the stamps of his many sleepless nights.
You are relentless, his reflection seemed to say to him. A tool of God.
A splash of cold water brought him no further clarity, but it would have to do. There wasn’t much time to waste. Back at the computer, logs and logs of data stared back at him— chemical analyses, toxins, potential countermeasures. The sheer amount of data would beggar all the books Nathaniel Wayne had ever read.
Bruce Wayne had only a night and a day to process it. If he failed . . .
He didn’t know the details. A ritual of some kind, at the King for a Night event in Gotham Casino. Scores dead. Evil walking the streets of Gotham City, wearing everyday skin.
The thought lay heavy upon him. But the need to work—the all-consuming need to protect—was heavier. He returned to his seat at the master console in the Batcave, only for Zatanna’s glyph to chime.
“Checking in. How are you holding up, B?”
He didn’t know what to say. My body doesn’t feel like my own anymore. When I close my eyes, I see my friends staring back at me in horror.
“I’m fine, Zatanna. How’s the investigation?”
A beat before she answered. “Well. It’s going. Don’t worry about it, I’ve got my best Bats on the job. How . . . How is work?”
He was grateful for her small mercy. “Galapagos is complex. No wonder Penguin needed Ivy’s help with it—there are too many mechanisms in play to single out any one of them. An antidote will have to be comprehensive. It’ll take time.”
“Could ask Ivy,” Zatanna said.
“What?”
“Ivy made it, Ivy can make the antidote. Probably faster than we could.”
He frowned.
“She hates them, too. And she kind of owes us one. You should try, at least.”
Bruce drummed his fingers against the console. “One more thing.”
“You got it.”
“I have reason to believe . . . I have reason to believe part of the mechanism is magical. You and Blood are out in the field. Do you know anyone else who can help on short notice?”
Zatanna was the best stage magician in the world, which meant she was good at concealing her surprise on the other end of the line.
But he could still hear her smiling around the words.
“Yeah. I’ll send you the details. You’re looking for a guy named Pietro.”
“Bruce Wayne? Is that Little Brucey? My, you look awful.”
Two days ago, it would have been easy to brush that off with aplomb. Two days ago, Batman never would have dreamed of approaching a gargoyle for help.
Then again—two days ago, Nathaniel Wayne was nothing more than an ugly stain on his family history, a monster with whom he had nothing in common save an accident of genetics. Today, he knew differently. The line between him and Nathaniel was thinner than he ever imagined. His hands no longer felt like instruments of justice. Looking up at the gargoyle, Batman wasn’t sure what to do with them.
“If I knew you were coming I would have dressed the part. Although, I must say, my dear boy—bats?”
Watching the Gargoyle’s lips move made him uncomfortable. The thought that someone’s soul was trapped inside more so. Still—these were only single notes in the music of his own discomfort. Being here. Dealing with magic. Knowing what it felt like to break his friends’ noses. Knowing there hadn’t been anything he could do to stop it.
Was he really Bruce Wayne, after all? No wonder he looked awful.
“Bats are frightening,” he mumbled, the words well-worn. “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot.”
“Ah, now I know you’re Bruce,” answered the gargoyle. “You sound just like your father.”
He winced. Tonight, of all nights, he didn’t want to talk about family. “Zatanna said you could help.”
The gargoyle heaved a gravelly sigh. “Straight to business, is it? All right, all right. What can I do for you?”
“There’s a ritual tomorrow. Something big. It involves . . . magic.”
“Rituals usually do,” said Pietro. “I’m guessing you want my advice on how to disrupt it?”
“Yes. We know it involves a poison. I’ve been trying to develop an antidote—but there are parts of it my usual methods can’t affect. Zatanna and Jason Blood are . . . preoccupied. She recommended you.”
How strangely delighted the gargoyle looked. He gestured to Batman. “Well, I have been known to dabble in the occult,” he said. “What do you have to work with?”
Batman held up the vial of Galapagos he’d taken from the casino, which Nathaniel had thankfully not found in Bruce Wayne’s jacket. Moss glowed faintly against the glass.
“Bring it up here, dear boy,” said the gargoyle.
He frowned. None of this felt right. His body didn’t feel right. As he grappled up to the gargoyle’s resting place, he was conscious of every tendon in his body, every sinew. The coolness of the stone penetrated even his insulated gloves. All of these things should have told him that he was here, that he was real, that he was himself—but he’d felt them as Nathaniel.
Reality was more subjective than he’d like to admit.
Pietro took the vial from his hand. He uncorked it, wafting it beneath him with all the grace of a perfumer. Batman wondered if a stone spirit like him could smell at all. He didn’t want to think about it too much.
“Ah, I see the problem now,” Pietro announced. “While I can’t say anything for the botanical components, the magical ones are patently obvious. You said this was a poison?”
Atop the gargoyle, he nodded. A moment later he thought better of it: “Mhm.”
“It’s an insidious one. Whoever did this—well, I would certainly hate to cross them. When this magic took its first breaths, Gotham City was but a distant dream. I can’t do much about it from where I am . . .”
Batman frowned.
“. . . But, if I’m not mistaken, you can.”
“How?” It didn’t make sense to him, but he was no magician.
“The magical portion of this is keyed to one thing and one thing only: suppressing a person’s natural fear response. Devilish work, if I do say so myself—on its own, it’s inert, but when activated by another mage it amplifies the effects of both the toxin and the mage’s next spell. Now, whatever your foe intends to do, it’s predicated on wanting their prey calm and docile. You might think the answer is to instill courage—but you’d be wrong. That’ll only drive this spell’s hooks in deeper. What you need is more fear—powerful fear. Crystallize it. Expose this spell to it, and it will crumble.”
Beneath the layers of Kevlar and ceramic plating, beneath the cage of his ribs, Batman’s heart sank. “What do you mean?”
“Well, just that. Alchemy isn’t far off from chemistry, you know; it’s all agents and reagents. You know something of fear, don’t you?”
Scarecrow’s toxins. A boy, alone in an alley. Nathaniel’s hatred burning within his chest.
The answer came hard-won and soft-spoken. “Yes.”
“Then all you must do is synthesize that and add it to what you have here,” said the gargoyle. “Blood or breath usually work best. Add a drop or a gasp—whichever you prefer. A single of either should be enough to empower the whole antidote.”
The Batman stood upon the gargoyle’s plinth. Before him glittered the city of Gotham— oblivious as ever to the rot threatening to consume it from within.
Fear was one answer. He would need another if he was going to counteract the effects of Galapagos.
“Leaving already?” Pietro asked him.
Most nights he would leave without saying a word. Most nights, the wind would have answered Pietro’s question.
But there was a part of him that did not have the energy to be so distant. Part of him wanted to be seen and heard. “I’m afraid so.”
“Will you come back, Bruce? Without all the accouterments, I mean. So that we can talk? I’ve been dreadfully worried about you.”
Had anyone worried about Nathaniel Wayne? Had anyone waited by a lantern for a passing sight of him? “Some other night, Pietro.”
Stone sighed beneath him. “Some other night.”
Pamela Isley was trying to tend to her children. As she entered her greenhouse for the first time in months, blossoms opened to greet her and fruit swayed on its branch. Everywhere the air was sweet and thick with the renaissance of life.
To stand among them was to remember happiness. Often her more human emotions felt like memories—but there were exceptions. And this place, this sacred garden, was one of them.
But then she noticed the intruder.
Anything green was worth protecting, of course, anything green was welcome here, anything green would be loved. But Ivy knew every spine, every petal, every pistil and calyx within her domain. Each was carefully selected to be here, to live in harmony with its brethren, to enhance without causing harm. She had other greenhouses throughout the city for varying climates—this was her temperate grassland garden.
Which was what made the appearance of a desert rose so troubling. And worse, where the other blossoms all heeded her calls, this one did not. Neither did the others near it—not the aster, nor the indigo, nor the goldenrod. All spoke to her in their way: this thing is not alive.
So it was that she knew there was someone else in the greenhouse. Someone who must have thought she’d like this gift.
Her senses expanded, shedding the trappings of her human body, to see with the green’s eyes. There was a woman among the boughs. Ivy reached with her hands that were not hands; vines wrapped around her quarry.
“Whoever you are, you had better have a very good reason for being here,” she said.
Strained and short of breath came the answer: “How about immortality?”
When Poison Ivy scoffed, her beloved children scoffed with her. “Humans strive for immortality in nature’s shadow.”
The vines tightened around the woman. Distantly—as a second order thought—Ivy took in her features. A teenager—no, older than that. Hair white as oleander, and eyes that belied her youthful mask. Ivy didn’t know her. At least, she was fairly certain she didn’t. Hard to keep track of faces, sometimes.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my garden? How did you get here?”
“Could you let go of me? I mean you no harm. I just wanted to talk,” the girl said. “I thought—I thought the flower would show we’re not so different—”
Perhaps it was how deeply her recent internment drained her. Perhaps it was the pleading note in the girl’s voice. Either way, Ivy did not crush her, as she might have any other night.
“You realize where you are?”
“I know well enough.”
“And you came here regardless.”
“What happened to you was wrong. I want to atone.”
Oh. All-too-human anger flowered in Ivy’s chest. The vines squeezed tighter, the woman wriggled. “I was looking for a reason to let you go. You’re giving me reasons to kill you.”
The woman sucked in a breath. A burst of green magic sizzled along the length of Ivy’s vine. Like dodder, it consumed whatever it found; Ivy drew them back rather than bear the sight of their pain. The woman landed on her feet, hands held in the air.
“Please, I came here to parlay. To set right . . . some of the wrongs.”
Ivy could have won a fight—but probably not tonight. Frowning, she called a bough to serve as her makeshift throne. “Fine. Make your case.”
The woman in the girl’s body looked around, as if searching for her own chair. There was none to be found. Her shoulders slumped. “My name is Palmyra Lent. I believe the papers are calling me the Pearl.”
Ivy cocked a brow. “So why the rose?”
Palmyra met her eyes. “Flowers tend to spring up after me. I thought you might like to have one.”
Ivy perched her head on her hands. She said nothing, for she knew well enough the pain of having someone else choose what happened to your body. There were few words for it. Instead, she released a calming, pleasant chemical into the air. Tension melted from Palmyra.
Neither woman drew attention to the good deed. That, too, could be painful. Solace was enough. “The people who imprisoned you—I work for them,” began Palmyra. “For so many years now, I’ve lost count. Generations. I thought I would offer you a chance for revenge.”
“First immortality, now revenge. Which is it?”
“A little of both,” Palmyra said. “This has all happened before. It goes all the way back through Gotham City like a ribbon of fat through a joint of meat. The fire at the Gotham Linenworks. The pirate massacre on board the Orca. The collapse of the old Condiment Cannery. The Devil’s Tears during Prohibition—perhaps you learned about that in school? Tainted bootleg applejack. Poisoned seven speakeasies before it ran out. And before that, the witch trials. Every seventy or eighty or ninety years, Gotham . . . spasms. And people die in droves. The flowers swallow them whole, and there I stand.”
“Don’t tell me—you held the witches hostage for three months before you burned them,” Ivy cuts in.
“No. I wish it were that simple. We told the witch-hunter to stop, but it was hard to deal with him even then. I . . . I did not want him to join.”
“But you were forced to accept him, by this group?”
“I was,” Palmyra answered. “I’m certain you know what it’s like. If someone threatened your family, wouldn’t you have done the same?”
Pamela might have. Ivy was a different story. She’d burn down the world and everything in it to save a single blade of grass. “Just who are these people?”
“They have many names. We all do. Each builds on the next, layers and layers . . . and this city gives its own names. Condiment King. Orca. Mr. Calculator. Crazy Quilt. Mr. Camera. Amusing monikers for deeply unamusing people. They wear new names tonight: Edmund Ellis, Devin Dancy, Basil Conrad, Derrick Graves, James Gordon. Even the most powerful of them, Morgaine le Fey, wears the guise of an heiress named Sophie Winters. It keeps them safe. And allows them to wreak havoc as they please, since the only real consequence is a slightly longer waiting period before I revive them.”
Ivy wasn’t sure which was more surprising—hearing Jim Gordon named as part of a cabal, or that Morgaine le Fey herself was involved with it. She supposed the old man always did have a nose for trouble.
“A blind cut,” Ivy mused, half to herself.
“What?”
“It’s a blind cut, what you’ve done.” She hadn’t been trapped in a casino for months for nothing. “An old card trick. Zatanna would know it. You should ask her. You shuffle the cards so it looks like a random mix, but really the order never changed: kings, queens, jacks, all right where they always were. The cut looks fair, but it never was. The order of the world stayed just how they wanted it, and the house always . . . well. Surely you know that part. And while they’re off enjoying their new bodies and increasing their fortunes, there’s you. Palmyra Lent. Pretending to shuffle the deck for a new game when the old game never stopped. You’ve been resurrecting them?”
“I’ve been there. Watching. I have to be. I’m the conductor for all that energy. It passes through me on the way out of this plane. I find places for it to go.”
“And when you do, Gotham spasms,” Ivy said. “So what you’re saying is the real problem with this place is generational wealth. How nice to be off the hook for once.”
Palmyra hugged herself. She’d been so confident in coming here, and yet as the conversation wore on, she shrank more and more. As if talking about this regressed her to the young woman she seemed to be.
“It’s . . . magic has a price, and death is a jealous mistress, I’m sure you’re aware,” she began. Her eyes met Ivy’s, then quickly looked away. “Moving souls to new bodies consumes a large amount of my own personal energy. Years of my life, gone—each time younger and younger. And as our group has expanded, it’s become more energy than I can give. These spasms, they’re . . . the debt has to be paid somehow, or the others won’t be properly anchored to their bodies. The others plan it, and I follow through.”
On her way out of the casino, Ivy saw banners for an event. King for a Night. She’d been in Penguin’s casino, but if Palmyra made him the same offer she was making right now—well, what better place to get rid of a couple hundred people who needed to disappear?
“Why are you telling me all this?” Ivy said. A branch reached to comfort her. She noted, with a small smirk, that it was yew. “I already told you I have no interest in borrowed immortality. The Green provides for me.”
Palmyra Lent, the girl who had seen centuries, swallowed. “I need the ritual to go well. If it doesn’t, my family . . . It has to go perfectly. Galapagos is part of the ritual—it keeps them docile, and the magical component acts as an amplifier for my powers. They won’t fear, they won’t feel a thing. All things considered it’s a mercy. But, the—”
“The Bat is coming,” Ivy finished. “And you’re afraid I’ll tell him everything I know about Galapagos.”
Palmyra looked away. “If you just don’t tell him anything about it, if you don’t help him—we can work something out. My benefactor’s a wealthy man. We could provide for you—”
“I provide for myself,” Ivy cut in.
“But there must be something you want. Your own island where you could conduct whatever experiments you wanted. Funding for whichever programs you’d like. With the sort of circles they move in, you could have anyone’s ear. All that’s required of you is inaction. Isn’t that a good deal?”
“All this talk of deals is tiresome, don’t you think?” Ivy said. She rose from her seat. The girl stood unmoving not far away—but the boughs and blooms around her swayed in sympathy. “You and I are beyond deals. You know that, don’t you? You don’t have to serve these people. What could you possibly gain by serving them? What could I gain?”
Palmyra frowned. Again, she looked down. “It’s my family,” she repeated. “Please.”
Memories. Pamela’s mother kneeling before the rose bushes, face dirtied, whispering to her all the secrets contained within those petals. Her mother’s body buried beneath the garden— the roses claiming their secrets anew. The look in her father’s eyes when he realized that vengeance had come for him.
“Family will only weigh you down. You’re meant for more than this.”
“You don’t understand,” Palmyra shot back. This time she did meet Ivy’s eyes, her own
full of anger, full of fear. “They love me. They’ve just forgotten it, over the years, but they do love me, and some day they’re going to remember, and everything will be right again. Until then, I have to keep them safe. And I can’t keep them safe without these people. That’s why—”
“They don’t love you. They loved who you were. You’re something different now, and they can’t understand,” Ivy said. She kept her voice calm, warm, even. Harley had been giving her tips on communicating with people. Speaking from her own experience was supposed to be helpful. “Change is as natural as death.”
The girl’s hands tightened into fists. “I thought that there would be someone who understood. Someone who saw me. I thought that could be you.”
The air was changing. Her old senses wouldn’t have caught it. But just as animals knew the coming of a storm, so too did the flora of Gotham City know the Batman’s approach. Flowers hid their faces; leaves trembled on the branch. Ivy looked about the greenhouse, wondering how much of this was her, and how much the Green.
“You’d do well to understand yourself,” Ivy said. “I can’t help you with that. But I can tell you he’s almost here.”
Was it sweat or a tear that ran down the side of Palmyra’s face? Ivy had no interest in knowing. One unwelcome visitor was already a pain. Two was a nail driven through her temple. Pamela Isley might have cared to sit with this woman and work through all of their issues together.
Ivy didn’t.
She snapped. The vines heeded her call, shaping a ladder she often used for getaways. It let up into a copse of trees she’d grown just to cover her tracks. “Go. You don’t have long.”
Palmyra walked past her, toward the ladder. She stopped at Ivy’s side. They shared a glance—but Ivy had said all she wanted to say about the situation, and Palmyra must have known.
Ivy had five minutes of blissful silence in which to apologize to her plants for the interruption before the Batman came knocking.
To her surprise, it was a literal knock. She’d never known him to be so conscientious before. Usually he’d appear when she was turned away, or drop in through the skylight, raining glass down on everything she had worked so hard to grow.
But tonight, he knocked, and she found that though his shoulders did not slump, there was an aura to him only a little less dejected than Palmyra’s. The stubble spoke volumes; she only ever saw it when he had gotten dangerously close to crossing the line. He held himself as if he wanted to be smaller than he was.
She opened the door for him. It made her feel like a housewife, something she hated, but she’d make an exception in this case. There was no way he’d come to take her in tonight. And, for all their differences, she had known him for years. Only the most distinctive humans were worthy of her attention.
“Pamela,” he said.
“Batman. I think I know why you’re here.”
“Hm. That makes this easier,” he said, nodding. There was a weariness to his voice that left her feeling adrift. She couldn’t remember seeing him like this before—looking past her and not at her. “You know Galapagos better than anyone. I need an antidote for it.”
Somehow, she found herself moving toward the lone desk in the greenhouse. Harley had dropped off hot cross buns and green tea earlier. Ivy didn’t need to eat anymore and found processed foods disgusting, but . . . sometimes she had a bite for old time’s sake. And the tea, at least, was thoughtful.
“Something to eat?” she asked him. It came out stilted and strange.
He looked at the pastries. He did not say no. Confronted with a breadth of options, Ivy settled on orange cranberry, sliding it over to him with a cup of tea.
Batman looked down at it. With a sad smirk, he shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“I gave your associate all the data I had,” Ivy said. “You must have looked it over.”
“I did,” he said. “Intricate work on your part—mystical and chemical, both working in tandem. I’ve taken care of the mystic part, but the chemical . . .”
He trailed off in failure. Ivy felt a swell of pride, which she stifled given the circumstances. “It isn’t like you to ask for help. To ask me for help.”
“I . . . haven’t been myself, lately,” he said. He paused. “Lent was here.”
“What gave it away?”
“The flowers,” he answered. “You’d never grow desert roses here.”
She let the moment hang undisturbed.
“You know what she’s doing,” he said.
“I got the gist.” A beat. She thought, then, about the way he was acting—about what Palmyra had said. “Did she . . . did she do it to you?”
In the silence of the greenhouse—a silence born of dripping water and rustling leaves— the Dark Knight’s answer took its time to grow. “Yes.”
This was fast rising above her paygrade and into Harley’s. Maybe she’d swing by soon. She did like to check in when Ivy was in the greenhouse. Good to have regular human contact, she said. Who knew there would be so much of it today?
“If you’d like to forget—” she started, but he shook his head.
“No. I can’t. What I did—what he did—is something I’ll have to carry with me. I’ve looked away from too many things for too long.”
As far as she saw it, the Bat’s eyes were everywhere at all times. They’d gotten him and Jim Gordon. Palmyra hadn’t been exaggerating when she talked about the group’s reach. “Pamela, I’m asking for your help. I don’t have the time to do this on my own, not when
it’s this complex. You know what she means to do. The people they’re targeting—this event isn’t for CEOs, it isn’t for the people pumping for oil on sacred land, it isn’t for corrupt politicians.
They’re everyday citizens trying their best to get by. They don’t deserve to die.”
She didn’t like the way he sounded, or maybe she just didn’t like the way it made her feel. Batman never let himself sound like this. He was too human, now, too much like anyone else on the street. Whatever he had seen really had shaken him.
And, strangely, that made her hate Palmyra’s captors all the more. “. . . All right,” she said. “Did you bring a sample with you?”
He laid the vial on the desk. She picked it up. “Give me three hours. In the meantime . . . you might want to check on your friends.”
There—just a flash of his former self. His muscles went taut as wire. “What do you mean?”
“Palmyra said they had Jim Gordon.”
He loosened—but only a little. Must have already known. His lips pressed together into a scowl as he turned toward the door.
“I’ll look after Jim,” he said. “You look after Galapagos.” The door closed behind him.
Pamela Isely had five minutes of silence, five minutes of working in peace, five minutes of thinking about the two broken souls she’d just met.
And then Harley walked in the door and nothing was broken anymore.
Idle time stuck like a stone in his throat.
Best thing for it was to work it loose.
On the corner of Clarkson and Seventy-Fifth he spotted two men in spangled leather jackets following an old woman. From the way they walked, he knew one of them was carrying a knife. As the woman turned down an empty side street they picked up the pace. One called out to her: “Hey, Granny, I think you dropped something.”
It was a simple job, one he’d run any number of times. The sort of thing he could do without thinking. Throw a Batarang, knock the switchblade out of his hand, kick him to the ground. Restrain the other one. Cuff them. Walk the woman to her apartment.
He shouldn’t have had to think about it.
But he did. The Batarang was in his hand and the thought occurred: what were the witch-hunter’s tools?
His residual memories held the answers: stones and rope, holy words wielded like weapons. The Batarang in his hand grew heavy. He told himself it wasn’t the same, but the chill that ran through him remained.
A shout cut through his indecision: the old woman had seen the knife.
He threw the Batarang. Metal clashed against metal; the knife hit the sidewalk. In a rush of fabric and muscle, Batman was on them, falling from the sky like the fist of an angry god. The two men beheld him with eyes wide and mouths agape. Sinners at last facing their punishment. A city waiting to be cleansed of sin.
Those weren’t his thoughts.
Hesitation cost him again. Instead of a clean kick to the back, followed through, he slapped against the once-armed man like a punching bag. Both tumbled to the ground. A weak punch thumped Batman’s temple. At least the angle made things awkward for the mugger, too.
The cuffs—he needed the cuffs. Pinning the man with his forearm, Batman reached for his belt.
And, for a moment, felt his hands close around a vial of holy water.
Anger and fear welled up inside him—but these weren’t foreign emotions. He knew them well. For the past decade he’d fought them every day, refined them into something new. Nathaniel had worn his skin. Nathaniel’s hands had beaten his friends. But Batman—Bruce––was not Nathaniel, and wouldn’t allow himself to be.
No matter how strong the call in the back of his mind for this mugger’s blood.
The fog of his mind cleared. He saw the cuffs clearly now, and as he slapped them against the mugger’s wrist they made a satisfying sound.
The mugger’s accomplice was already running. Bolas from the other side of his belt solved that problem, whistling through the air before they caught the runner around his legs. The man yelped and fell face first to the pavement. It took only another second to restrain the first man’s feet. The second man hadn’t gotten far.
When he had them under control, he called it in. Then he realized the old woman was staring at him. A pang of guilt twisted in his gut, and he wondered for a moment how he must look to her. The Bat frightened criminals—but it often frightened the innocent, too. He did what he could to show them he meant no harm, but the myth of the Bat had its casualties.
Still—he didn’t know if he could bear an old woman’s fear tonight. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, I’ve dealt with worse than them.” They both knew it wasn’t really true—but that didn’t stop him putting her groceries back in their bags. As he handed them back, she studied him again. “What a kind young man. The papers say you’re a menace, you know.”
“Only to them,” he said, nodding toward her muggers. “Go on home. I’ll keep watch.”
She picked up the bags. He thought of offering to help, but she didn’t seem the sort of woman who would take kindly to an offer like that. Some people needed help; some just needed someone to keep a look out.
Batman shot a gargoyle with his grapple gun. From atop it he watched the little old lady walk to her door. A man with a thick mustache met her there, clad in his white undershirt, baseball in hand. He threw his arms around her and held her close.
He looked a lot like Jim Gordon.
Batman was afraid of hurting his friends.
He was afraid that if he didn’t, they’d die—or worse than that, they’d go somewhere else, their souls dissipating like cold breath in the winter air.
And he was afraid, too, that all of this had been happening under his nose for years—and he hadn’t seen it.
How much of this could he have stopped if he paid more attention?
If only he’d listened sooner. If he’d trusted Zatanna, if he’d listened when rumors spread about his old classmates.
One thing was certain: this wasn’t something he was going to solve alone.
Three hours later, Batman picked up the cure from Ivy. It came in two dozen vials, each highly potent. All he’d have to do was get them into the sprinkler system.
Well. That and introduce the secret ingredient.
He felt silly, holding the vials, thinking of his fears. But he knew how potent fear could be, and he knew that his fear of letting Gotham fall into the dark had kept it safe for so long.
He did it anyway, in the dark of the cave, surrounded by the memories his friends had lent him. He thought of his fears, he held them close, and then . . . with a breath, he let them go.
The Galapagos in the vial—previously glowing a soft blue-green—went violet.
It would have to do.