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Gotham was an unforgiving city, dark and cruel; a city that took and took and never gave in return.
This time, it had taken Dick Grayson, one-time acrobat, now sacrifice.
Of course, they told him this was an honor. They described the good he would be doing for the people of Gotham, the life he was helping to preserve, the great service he was providing to the innocent of Gotham.
It didn’t seem to bother anyone else that he, too, was innocent.
So, prepped and primped and properly anointed, the good people of Gotham left Dick in the vast maze of caves that ran through the city to die for their Bat-God.
Dick tried.
He tried escaping, he tried begging, he tried weeping, but it was all to no avail. They'd chained him to the altar and left him alone with only the rapidly melting candles for company.
When the flames were extinguished, the Bat-God would come for him. There was nothing Dick could do but wait.
The cave was warm, heated by the hordes of bats living above him and the air that seemed to come from inside the earth itself, the hot breath of hell.
Shadows danced around him, the only witnesses to his oncoming demise as the flames flickered. With a last sputter, the candles burned themselves out, leaving Dick in total darkness.
He closed his eyes, the familiar grey easier to handle than the terrifying black of the cave.
The air changed around him, as if some huge creature had displaced it.
The Bat-God had come.
Sharp claws brushed against his cheek and Dick's eyes snapped open.
The rim of a cup was pressed to his lips, probably the goblet left on the altar above him, filled with what, Dick didn't know. He didn't want to drink it, but as the goblet tipped up and the liquid hit his mouth, Dick wondered if that wouldn't be best. Drink the poison or be torn apart by the Bat-God.
What a way to go.
Dick parted his lips and drank. It was sweet and aromatic, like a wine without the kick. The goblet was taken away and the physical presence moved out of his perception.
There was no time in the dark, but it didn't take long before Dick's head began to swim. Colors like fireworks popped in his vision. The air around him grew chilled, or maybe it was inside him. He felt like he was flying, and maybe he was. Yes, he was flying, like he used to in the circus, when his parents had been alive and the sun shone bright and he'd never heard of Gotham.
Dick smiled and took wing into the darkness of a dreamless sleep.
The first thing Dick knew on waking was that he was still alive.
The second thing was that he was no longer in the cave temple, but in a bed, tucked under soft sheets.
The third was that he was nude, which was not how he'd been left in the caves.
Still, naked and alive was certainly better than the dead alternative, so Dick figured he'd take it for now. And a bed was definitely an improvement on a sacrificial cave.
Sighing, Dick snuggled himself further into the blankets, hoping to slip back into the familiar weightlessness of deep dreams. Something was preventing him, however; something was wrong, but it was not clear enough for him to know what it was. The warm glow of sleep was leaving him, his senses rapidly tuning into his new environment.
Someone else was here.
For a moment, he debated feigning sleep until they left, but that had never been his strong suit, even as a child. Better to know who or what he was facing now, before his mind made them more monstrous.
Dick's eyes opened to a sky blue ceiling.
On his right was a wall, flush to the bed, but his left was open to the rest of the room. No one was in view, not even in his peripheral vision. But someone was there.
Dick could feel them watching him.
Swallowing back fear, Dick turned his head to the left.
A man stood by the head of his bed, dressed in an old-fashioned black suit. He was handsome, with the kind of face that only money or incredibly selective genes could produce. His face was expressionless, though Dick imagined that he would be stunning if he smiled. His eyes were blue and bone tired.
For long silent moments, they stared at each other, not quite sizing the other up, but just looking. The man didn't blink once, nor did his eyes rove what little of Dick was visible beneath the blankets, but Dick had the strangest feeling as if the man was somehow reading his soul.
Finally, the man blinked, long and slow like a cat. When his eyes opened again, they focused intently on Dick's own.
“Are you hungry?” the man asked. His voice was deep and rich and exhausted.
Dick wasn't, in fact, but he was thirsty, terribly so. He tried to speak, but his voice gave out, his answer cracking into air.
The man came forward and picked up a pitcher from the bedside table, pouring a small glass of what Dick hoped was just water. Setting the pitcher down, the man gently helped Dick sit upright so he could drink. He seemed in no hurry, so Dick drank his fill.
When Dick had finished, the man returned the glass to the table, but made no move to touch Dick further.
“Who are you?” Dick asked, after another moment of silence.
“I am—” The man paused, something like recognition flickering briefly in his eyes before it died again. “I don't know.”
Dick hadn't expected that answer.
“Where am I?”
“My home.”
“Are we still in Gotham?”
“Yes. You.” The man refocused on Dick's eyes. “You were brought to me.”
Dick hadn't expected that, either.
“Are you the Bat-God's priest?”
“I am…” That same light flickered and faded in his eyes again. “...its avatar.”
“You must be lonely,” Dick said.
The man opened his mouth quickly as if to protest, but Dick held his gaze steady, and he sighed. “Yes.”
So many questions raced through Dick's mind, fighting to get out all at once: How long had he been out? How long did he have to stay here? What had happened to the prior sacrifices? What would happen to him now?
“I'm sorry,” Dick said.
The man cocked his head slightly, staring at Dick in confusion, as if no one had ever been sorry for him before. “It is the price of Justice.”
That didn't sound right to Dick, but then, Gotham had strange ideas of everything. He'd let it go for now.
“What happens now?”
“You will stay here until the next new moon. You'll want for nothing, but you cannot leave.”
“What happens at the new moon?”
For the first time something like sadness shown through the man's exhaustion. “The Bat-God will return to claim its due.”
“Me,” Dick said.
The man nodded.
“Is that what happened to all the other sacrifices?” Dick asked. “They died?”
“Justice must be upheld.”
Dick nodded, a numbness spreading through his mind. He had been prepared to die in the caves; now, he wasn't so sure.
“When you're ready, I'll have food for you. The house is yours to explore. Anything you need, you can have.”
“Except my life,” Dick snapped.
“Until the new moon.”
Dick nodded, the momentary flash of anger already gone, leaving him colder than before.
The man reached out as if to touch Dick's shoulder in comfort, but stopped halfway, his hand dropping to his side once again.
“I will be downstairs when you're ready.” He gave Dick a half bow and left the room.
Absently, Dick knew he wanted to cry. He wanted to scream, to fight, to rage and wail and tear at himself and anything within reach. But he felt nothing.
Instead, he curled himself into a ball beneath the sheets and closed his eyes.
Eventually, he would go downstairs and eat and get through the day. For now, he just needed to be alone.
The next few days of Dick's life were almost pleasant, despite the specter of death looming over him. The nameless Bat-God's avatar was a very accommodating host, and, true to his word, Dick wanted for nothing. Every room in the mansion in which they lived was open to him, and even the avatar seemed to regain energy from Dick's presence.
During the night, Dick was left alone, which suited him well enough. Both men became morose as the sun disappeared, and, with little else for distraction, Dick found that sleep was the best medicine.
Halfway through his imprisonment, on the night of the full moon, Dick woke suddenly. Something had disturbed his sleep, but in the darkness of the room, he could see no sign of it. He turned on the small lamp on the bedside table, but his room was as empty as when he'd settled in for the night.
While he had never been expressly forbidden from the manor during the night, the idea of wandering the winding corridors in the dark held little appeal to him. Still, he was awake now. Maybe he could find his way down to the kitchen for food, or at least get some cold water.
Halfway there, Dick got turned around, his usually steady sense of direction failing him after being confined for so long. Instead of the kitchen or even the bedrooms he'd started at, Dick found himself in an unused wing of the house. It was darker here than the rest of the manor, and the air closer, though Dick couldn't see why. It seemed to have less to do with the temperature than the atmosphere of the wing.
From the black hallway came the faint glow of light through the cracks of a doorway. As if entranced, Dick moved toward it, pausing just before he opened the door.
Someone was inside.
Silently, Dick knelt by the door and peered through the unblocked keyhole. The room appeared to be an old study, nearly every surface covered in a thick layer of dust. From his angle, he could just make out the shape of someone standing beside an old grandfather clock. They seemed to be in a sort of weird costume, the outline of which obscured the lines of the body.
“I don't want to.” It was the avatar. He spoke as if to someone, though Dick could see no one else in the room. “He has done nothing.”
“You must,” came the reply from everywhere and nowhere. “Justice must be served.”
“There must be another way.”
“Have you forgotten your family so soon?”
The avatar flinched bodily.
“You know what you must do,” the other voice hissed.
The avatar bowed his head.
“It is time to fly,” said the voice.
The avatar straightened.
“I am Vengeance,” he said. “I am the Night.”
He spread his arms wide and Dick saw what had blocked his silhouette.
It was a cape.
“I am the Bat.”
A rush of wind swirled through the room, stirring up shadows to swirl around him. The fabric of the cape stretched and stiffened into large bat wings as the avatar grew and transformed.
Dick sprang to his feet and fled. Somehow, through his sheer panic, he made it back to his room, shutting the door tight behind him. He dove for the bed and buried himself beneath the blankets, shuddering in fear until his exhaustion overtook him.
Dick fell into a dark sleep, chased endlessly by the monstrous Bat-God who was his host.
It was only hunger that pulled Dick out of his room the next afternoon, the terror from the night before still flowing through him like a slow poison. He didn't encounter his host on the way to the empty kitchen, something which bothered him more than he thought it should, considering the situation.
It would have been better if he'd been killed in the temple. This temporary stay of execution only made his upcoming demise more terrible.
The food helped to steady his nerves a little, and, while he wasn't in the mood to go poking around the abandoned wing, Dick did wonder where the avatar was now. The transformation had explained a few things about his host, at least: why he always looked so tired, why Dick had been brought here, and, more than anything, why he seemed to remember so little about himself.
Gods have never cared for human needs.
His host was in the library, seated in the same chair as always. He looked more exhausted than Dick had seen so far.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said by way of greeting, although his eyes shone through his fatigue, as if Dick’s mere presence was enough to rally him.
Dick nodded, silently taking the seat opposite him. He didn’t know what to say, or if he should let his host know what he’d seen. Would it be safe to do so? Did it even matter, when death was coming for him so soon anyway?
“How long have you been—” Dick hesitated, searching for the right word. “God-touched?”
The spark faded from the avatar’s eyes again. “Very long.”
“Too long?”
The avatar said nothing. Dick took his silence as agreement.
“My mom used to tell me about the god-touched,” Dick said. “How, in the old days, they were thought of as blessed, the chosen few the gods spoke to and through. It was an honor to be god-touched, and everyone knew it.”
His host seemed to be hanging onto every word Dick said, although, when Dick looked closely, his gaze was not on Dick himself.
“But my dad’s family,” Dick continued, letting his own gaze soften. “They’d been god-touched, and they knew it was no blessing. ‘Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.’”
When Dick looked back at the avatar, his eyes were focused on Dick’s again.
“Who can deny a god?” Dick asked.
A tear rolled down the avatar’s face, but he didn’t seem to notice. Dick wanted to wipe it away, to kiss him dry, to hold him and be held in return. What did it matter? He was still going to die. Let the gods do what they would!
They always did anyway.
“I know it won't help me,” Dick said, his voice barely audible. “But I'm going to find your name.”
The avatar blinked in confusion, another few tears falling.
“Why?”
“Because you shouldn't belong to a god's will alone. You belong to you.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the avatar came toward him so suddenly, Dick thought he was going to be attacked. The avatar grabbed the back of Dick's head and pulled him up into a kiss.
It wasn't a great kiss. It was hard and desperate. But Dick wrapped his arms around the avatar’s neck and kissed him back, and, for one evening, the cruelty of the Bat-God was forgotten.
It was nearing sunset on the day of the new moon, and Dick had still not completed his quest.
He had tried. He’d scoured the rooms of the manor, walked the grounds, and searched through every paper he could find for a hint of his lover’s identity. Every search had turned up nothing.
Dick found himself in the study where he’d seen the avatar transform, though he hadn’t seen the man himself since the day before. Dick had hoped they would be able to spend his last day together, but when he’d awakened that morning, he had been alone.
The air was stale inside the study, as if the room was holding its breath for something.
Or someone.
Dick’s thoughts were racing, although his mind felt empty, a cold numbness covering everything that might have helped him in these last moments. He sank into the desk chair and bowed his head in defeat.
The room was soundless, eerily so. The furniture did not creak beneath him. No wind rattled the old windows. Even the old clock was still and quiet.
The clock.
Dick looked up, frowning at the silent guardian on the wall. With the amount of dust covering the room, it was possible the clock had not been wound in years. But something inside him told Dick there was more to it than neglect.
As soon as he reached the grandfather clock, he found what had been bothering him. Everything in the room was caked in dust; the clock was clean.
He opened the glass covering the face and turned the key still in its winding hole. It turned easily.
He wound the clock until the key stopped. Noises came from the trunk as if some mechanism was activating. Dick stepped back and the clock swung open from the wall.
A rush of warm air hit his face, a sigh from the pits of the earth.
From the light of the room, he could see rough stairs carved into the floor leading down into the cave system. He glanced around for a light of some sort to take with him when his eyes fell on some scratches on the back of the clock.
No, not just scratches.
A name.
Bruce.
Dick knelt down, tracing the carving with his fingertips. Someone—a child, he guessed, judging by the shape of the letters—had gouged his name into the body of the clock.
Flickering light suddenly shone from the base of the stairs. Dick glanced at the window and inhaled sharply.
The sun was gone.
The Bat-God was preparing for its sacrifice.
Dick stood on the edge of the hidden doorway. The numbness was gone, but fear had not replaced it. In its stead, he felt…
Ready.
His head held high, Dick made his way down the stairs.
The temple at the base was not the same one he had been left in. This one looked older, rougher. The stone altar was stained with the blood of previous sacrifices, but even this did not frighten Dick.
The avatar was on the opposite side of the altar from Dick, a goblet before him. Now, Dick could see the strange costume he wore. It was grey with a black cape over the shoulders. The avatar’s face was covered by an eared cowl, the eyes of which were blanked out. All Dick could see of his lover was the hard set of his mouth.
“I had meant to prepare you,” the avatar said as Dick approached. He nodded to the goblet. “Drink it. I promise you will feel no pain.”
Dick shook his head, staring into the blank eyelets of the cowl.
“Please, Dick.”
“No.”
The avatar’s shoulders drooped in resignation.
“I’m sorry.”
He came around the altar, spreading the cape as he had done on the night of the full moon.
“Justice must be upheld,” he said, his voice hollow. “I call upon the spirit of Justice to claim what it is owed. I am Vengeance. I am the Night. I am the Bat.”
A wind swelled from the depths of the cave, buffeting them. The avatar’s body snapped and split as the Bat-God took possession of him, leaving a monstrous beast before Dick. It reached for him with clawed hands.
“You’re not the spirit of justice,” Dick said.
The thing before him hesitated.
“Vengeance is not the same as justice.” Dick straightened. “Whatever you are, you’re a liar.”
The Bat-God snarled and charged, but Dick was quicker. He vaulted over the altar, leaving the slab between them. He couldn’t win this fight—not fairly, not easily—nor could he run; the creature knew the caves too well, he was sure.
But even if he couldn’t save himself, perhaps he could save…
“Bruce!”
The creature recoiled as if Dick had hit it.
“You are Bruce, aren’t you?” Dick continued. “I don’t know what happened to you, but I can guess. There was loss. Darkness. Grief. Something promised to keep you safe, to keep everyone safe. No one would suffer again. Justice would prevail.”
The monster lunged and Dick ducked around to the other side of the altar.
“A small sacrifice to be god-touched,” he said. “A small sacrifice to lose yourself.”
The monster growled and spun around.
“It lied, Bruce! It used you and it lied.”
The Bat-God flapped its wings and rose above the altar.
“It’s not the spirit of justice, Bruce,” Dick said. “It’s the demon of revenge.”
With a piercing shriek, the Bat-God swooped in for the kill. Its claws raked across Dick’s chest, shredding his skin. Dick yelled, stumbling back from the force of the blow.
It charged him again, but Dick managed to roll away before it landed on him. Springing to his feet, he ran away as fast as he could.
It wasn’t fast enough.
The Bat-God tackled him, pinning him to the altar stone. Dick gasped, the breath knocked out of him, new blood mixing with the old stains.
One hand wrapped around Dick’s throat, arching him backward, claws digging into his flesh.
“Bruce,” he choked out.
The hand squeezed tighter.
“I love you,” he whispered.
The hot breath of the Bat-God on his cheek was the last thing Dick felt as his life slipped away.
The first thing Dick knew on waking was that he was alive.
The second was that he was no longer in the cave temple, but in a bed, tucked under soft sheets.
The third was that he was nude, which was not how he’d last been in the caves.
But there was something new.
Someone else was here, beside him in bed.
Dick lolled his head to the left and opened his eyes.
Familiar blue eyes stared back at him.
“Bruce,” Dick whispered.
Bruce pulled Dick close and kissed him.
It was soft and promising.
It was a great kiss.
Dick wrapped his arms around Bruce’s neck and kissed him back.
“Did we make it?” Dick asked as they parted, his lips brushing Bruce’s. “Is it gone?”
“Yes, Dick,” Bruce said. “It’s gone. You saved me.”
Dick smiled. “We saved each other.”
Bruce kissed him again and Dick held him tight.
Gotham was an unforgiving city, dark and cruel.
But, for the first time, Gotham had given its god-touched children something in return.