[sup][h1][center][img]https://images.hdqwalls.com/wallpapers/batman-comic-art-00.jpg[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] T H E B A T M A N[/color] [color=darkgoldenrod]T H E B A T M A N[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup] Aftermaths are rarely loud. Crises themselves, the catalysing events, the worst-thing-that's-ever-happened-to-me's; these are cacophonic, discordant, deafening. They often involved the wrenching of metal, the crashing of concrete, blasts of gunpowder and gut-churning organic tearing and crunching and grinding. But the aftermaths - the minutes, hours, sometimes days afterwards - they were quiet. Dust settled, fires burnt out, rubble came to rest. And then, slowly but surely, the catastrophe that had first announced itself in a sudden roar rippled back out across the city in peels of tragedy. The Batman crouched low on the building roof above an open window, out of which emanated the loudest aftermath he had ever heard, even through the torrential rain that soaked the city tonight. A little boy had been killed tonight, found dead after 3 weeks missing. The mother wailed below, hoarse and exhausted. The father was a shell, struck motionless by shock. One of Jim's boys was in the room with them, trying desperately to offer comfort that was neither wanted nor would be effective. Neither parent would ever be the same again; statistically, they'd be divorced within the year, neither able to cope with their grief. They'd have lowered life expectancy, higher rates of depression, and their standards of living would decline. Nothing Bruce could do would ease these inevitable outcome. But Batman could stop it from happening again. [i][color=A9A9A9]Can you?[/color][/i] [right][b][color=000000]I must.[/color][/b][/right]The radio in his cowl's ear chirruped as Jim Gordon made contact. Gordon had been first on scene after the body had been discovered, and Batman had watched from the rooftops as the lieutenant organised cordons, oversaw evidence collection, and arranged the body to be collected by the coroner. As the gurney was lifted into the coroner's van, Gordon tilted his head up ever-so-subtly, casting a careful eye across the roof-edge. He'd seen the fluttering of a cape, and that was enough. "Batman. Body's arrived at the morgue. I've sent the team back out. Leslie can hold off processing for half an hour." [color=000000]"Understood."[/color] Batman launched a grapnel and swung into the night. The sobs got left behind; but the grief stayed. - Over the course of his half-decade career, Bruce never found that dealing with the dead ever got easier. Gotham's mismatched cabal of gangsters and psychopaths had left scores of bodies in their wake over the last five years, and undoubtedly for decades before that; Batman shouldered every life that was lost in his city, counting every single person that he failed to save. But the children...the children were always the hardest. He and Jim stood silently beside the giant slab GCPD mortuary table, the body bag - the oh-too-small body bag - lying zipped up atop the metal. Dr. Leslie Thompkins lingered at the door, her eyes darting between the bag and the two men standing over it. Her mouth crinkled warmly at the edges where she pulled her lips into a smile that wasn't really a smile at all. "I'm stepping out. Half an hour. Locking the morgue behind me." She said; Jim nodded solemnly as Leslie waved a key unenthusiastically. "Everyone knows I find children difficult. Loeb won't ask questions." Batman didn't look up, didn't move; it was only when he heard the click-clack of the key in the lock that he unearthed a hand from beneath his cloak to unzip the body bag, in one long, steady movement. The bag peeled open and suddenly it was unavoidable. Jim turned away, but Bruce's stony gaze somehow hardened further. The throat was a mess; stained with blood yet to be cleaned off, scraps and tufts of feathers burst forth from puncture wounds that encircled the boy's neck. Batman took a sample of some of the cleaner feather debris to be identified once he returned to the cave; he was sure that later, Leslie would find splinters of the calamus within the wounds. Cause of death was uncertain. Exsanguination, or asphyxiation? Did he bleed out, struggling for breath through a hundred punctured holes? Or did he suffocate, while his heart relentlessly pumped blood up and out his throat? "Jesus Christ..." Jim muttered from across the room. He was a seasoned cop, and like Bruce had seen far more morbid than the worst Gotham City had to offer. But children were always hard. "Stabbed with feathers...just when you think you've seen it all. You think this was Cobblepot?" Batman shook his head in a micro-movement. [color=000000]"Kids aren't Penguin's MO. Bad for business."[/color] Bruce produced a small torch from his gauntlet and carefully inspected the rest of the body. [color=000000]"He's been well-kept. Looked after."[/color] Jim re-approached the body as Batman went over it with care. [color=000000]"He's clean. New clothes. No signs of malnutrition. Hair cut recently - loose strands behind ears. Even makeup..."[/color] Batman trailed off. There was something bothering him about the body, something obvious that nevertheless eluded him. The mouth was slightly ajar, and Bruce could see that something had been stuffed inside. [color=000000]"Something in the oral cavity. I need a gag."[/color] Jim turned to Leslie's laid out tools on the cabinet-top behind them and passed Bruce the reverse plier; carefully, Bruce eased open the jaw of the boy, muscles already stiffening. Inside was... "Is that [i]newspaper[/i]?" Jim asked, nearly a whisper. Batman didn't respond, just removed the scrunched-up scrap, cautious not to tear it. He moved away from the body, spreading out and flattening the paper on the worktop that lined the side of the room. As the scrap unfurled, Bruce's fist clenched and he set his jaw. Jim approached from behind, and looked over Batman's shoulder to the newspaper article that had been revealed; there was a sharp intake of breath, and then a few looks from the article to the body and back to the article, and then Jim said: "My god. He's practically a double." The article was old, even if the crinkled paper it had been printed on wasn't. Batman seethed internally. From the page, 8-year-old Bruce Wayne sobbed at the end of a paparazzi camera, the night of his parent's death. From the slab, a perfectly painted doppelganger rested dead and mutilated. The clothes were a match; the haircut was copied to the strand. The makeup emulated young Bruce's facial structure with contour and highlight. Bruce didn't want to know how he'd missed this; so many details of that night he'd obsessed over, for years and years to this very day. How could he be his own blind spot? Wrapped in the article was a small item: a singular bullet casing. At a glance, it matched the calibre from the Wayne murders. "That needs to go to forensic immediately, check for prints, DNA." Batman picked up the casing and turned it over in his hand. [color=000000]"Check cold cases. Archived evidence."[/color] "You think the killer got these from the GCPD? It's all locked away. The department's dirty, but to dig [i]this[/i] up..." [color=000000]"Not ruling anything out. Not yet."[/color] Batman turned away from the counter and moved toward the window, lingering only briefly at the body; now that he'd seen the article, the resemblance had turned the cadaver from tragic to ghoulish, and he felt unseated, askew. He needed to leave. There was something he needed to check. - Crime Alley was quiet tonight, save for the steady drip-drop of rainwater running through the gutters and the ever-present background of Gotham at night. The ground was slick with water, and there was a wet sheen that reflected the mixed moon-and-lamp-light; but there was something else that the light illuminated, something far more concerning. Someone had redrawn the chalk outlines of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Batman un-melted from the shadows, spreading his own inky dark across the alleyway. He stood over the chalk etchings, unavoidably reliving the moment in his mind, each shot, each scream. He'd briefly surveyed the surrounding area when he'd arrived, but despite the freshness of the chalk - it had to be less than an hour old, drawn after the rain ended, it wouldn't have survived the downpour if done before - there was no evidence of anyone having been in the alley the entire night. Except for the [i]chalk[/i]. The fluttering of wings seized Batman's attention, zeroing in on the sound as he looked up sharply. Above him, from the rooftops; the beating of flight. Grapnel was already out and fired before it could end, and within seconds Bruce was above the alley atop the buildings, scanning furiously the skyline. Gotham stretched out before him, smoke and light spilling into the air, but the top of the city was as empty as the bottom. And then, a single caw, and more fluttering, and a magpie landed before him, spotlighted perfectly by the moon's light, reflecting ethereally on its monochrome coat. It tweaked its head, spying Batman in one beady eye; in its beak was a bead, brilliant white, that clattered on the stone as it was dropped by the bird and rolled its way to a stop at his boot, Batman stooping to pick it up. A pearl. The magpie stared at Batman, eerily quiet. He started toward it, movement already futile; it was up and gone in a beating of wings before he could catch it, regardless of speed. In its place was a scrap of paper, scratched from being clutched in its talons but legible nonetheless: ONE FOR SORROW Batman looked up at the bird, already a barely-visible speck in the night sky. Something inside him coiled in old, dredged-up turmoil. Whatever this was, in the pit of his stomach, he knew: it was going to get worse, before it got better.