[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/iI4vfvF.png[/img][/center][indent][color=a52a2a][b]New Gretna, Gotham City
Gotham International Airport
10:15 PM[/b][/color][/indent]
[indent][indent]The dial read forty-seven degrees, but it sure fucking felt like it was colder. After coming in from [i]Moscow[/i] it didn't make much sense, but you can’t shake your nerves. Your heart. Your [i]memories.[/i]

It was one of those nights, cold and miserable. The crowd at the airport coming in was familiar, people just wanting to be left alone while they took the next plane out to Atlantic City or Vegas; addicts, all of them. I could smell it on them as I passed—the urge, the taste, the [i]condition[/i] of having too much money and not knowing what to do with it; or having little money but not having the sense to not waste it all away at the table. That was the kind of shit that was normal for Gotham City, the kind of shit that never seemed to change. It was the kind of shit that made it feel like [i]home.[/i] It was probably the reason I felt like I had stepped off the plane into god damned Siberia. Anxiety trumps reality with these kind of things, but the weirdest part of it all was that it didn’t feel wrong. It’s like confronting your two-timing crack-obsessed asshole of a friend, you’ve been putting it off but once you throw him across the room you feel a whole lot better.

My hands are tucked deep in the pockets of my leather jacket, the scarf I had bought in Moscow still tucked around my neck like some cheap fashion statement. God bless Putin and his shitty post-soviet state for giving me the opportunity to own this fucking piece of shit novelty item.

I stop for a second, looking up to the clock posted on the wall. Even after all these years I could feel it—the internal clock as the broken Boy Wonder was screaming out like it was time to wake my happy ass up. I wonder how Drake was running things without Bruce at the helm, if he had it all figured out to begin with.

[i]Could he handle it?[/i]

It’s a thought that makes me think. Makes me think about picking up the phone and calling Alfred. Just to make sure. Jesus, I haven’t even talked to the old bastard since before I became deathly allergic to crowbars. God knows he has some smartass remark in store for me if I dialed him. 

[color=a52a2a]“Oh, what a fortuitous surprise to be speaking to the dead.”[/color] I mutter in an objectively terrible British accent, ending it with a hushed chuckle.

If there was one thing I miss about the [i]mission[/i], it was the sense of a family. Sometimes I think I’ll never have that back again; and even if I could, I don’t deserve it. Not after what I pulled a few months after I climbed back out of that [i]pit[/i]. My head wasn’t straight. Hell, it might not even be straight right now. But I need to stop hiding from it. Dad certainly would call me a chickenshit coward for staying away from The Narrows for this long—for [i]abandoning[/i] it. 

That’s why it’s my first stop on my ‘Return to Gotham’ tour.

It’d at least shut up the voice in my head who is reminding me that I should’ve done this years ago. That after holding Gotham “hostage” to get Bruce to do what I wanted, I should’ve just took the L and moved the fuck on. That I should’ve stopped acting like a moody teenager. My conscience isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s not very productive to be bitching and moaning and doubting myself ever since I decided to get on the 747. To come back to Gotham, to come to terms with myself and my past. To make amends the best way I know. The only problem is that resolve isn’t making this jiminy cricket motherfucker shut the fuck up. It all makes me think that the pit has had a lasting effect on me. 

I pass another corridor—the exit and the first time being officially back in Gotham cleared. As I’m about to mull over my thoughts I hear a voice to my left. An older fellow with a cane. 

[color=gray]“It’s a cold one tonight.”[/color]

I smirk. Most of the cold is my nerves, it’s not really that much of an issue. It’s not even Gotham at its coldest. It makes me remember of my first winter in the suit. It was difficult managing how to navigate Gotham with the rooftops so slick you could slide right off them. The New Jersey winters were the first challenge after I was ‘ready’, after I was [i]trained.[/i] Times before life took a turn for the worst. Still, after two years in Moscow, the colder seasons in Gotham didn’t really compare.

[color=a52a2a]“Trust me, Moscow is way colder.”[/color]

[color=gray]“Is it? Must be nice to be only partially freezing then.”[/color]

I laugh, the glibness catching me at the right moment. [color=a52a2a]“Yeah. Well, be safe out there.”[/color]

[color=gray]“You too, young man.”[/color]

The double doors open in front of me. It’s time to get a cab.
[/indent][/indent]

[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/iI4vfvF.png[/img][/center][indent][color=a52a2a][b]The Narrows, Gotham City
East End
11:03 PM[/b][/color][/indent]
[indent][indent]It wasn’t hard to get a cab and tell the driver to take me [i]home[/i], though I could easily see they were not the most comfortable with driving into the inner city. Least of all the strip of neighborhoods that were known as The Narrows.

It was always something I never understood, even during my time as Robin. The fear of the homeless and downtrodden, the wariness of people that had little to give. Not every person from The Narrows is a criminal or thug. If anything, they were far more worth protecting than the Gotham elite—their lives suffered more and they needed reassurance to carry on, to know that everything is going to be [i]fine.[/i] It’s an old thought of mine that I remember at Brentwood, the prissy little school Alfred and Bruce sent me to. I still remember it; the first comment I heard said about me at that damned place.

[quote][color=gray][i]He’s from [i]The Narrows[/i]! He doesn’t [i]belong[/i] here. Wouldn’t juvenile hall be more appropriate?[/i] [/color][/quote]
I take a light breath as I look around the street I was dropped off, an old familiar place standing in front of me. Only it’s not the same. It’s all rubble and debris. Debris that once maintained an old warehouse—an old warehouse that served as the epicenter of my whole childhood. I don’t like it, but it can’t be helped. No matter how much money The Wayne Foundation puts into helping Gotham’s less fortunate there will be no fixing of poverty and decay unless you understand that there is no easy way in fixing it.

I turn away, looking down the street westward, the smell of the factories and slums as apparent as ever. 

It’s been a long time since I stepped foot in The Narrows and the neighborhood has changed though not so much that it is unrecognizable. If I am to get started and figure out what I am going to do the first thing I need to do is get in contact with those I know who are still here. People I could talk to. People who did not give up on the old neighborhood. People I could get information about the neighborhood from. People like Sean Noonan and Amanda Groscz. The pieces left behind from my old life.

Out of the two, Noonan was the closest and the most likely to be available. The only one who had a bar nearby.

[color=a52a2a]“Welcome home, I guess...”[/color]
[/indent][/indent]