Disclaimer: I do not own any of the DC characters.
Superman knew that coming to Gotham to stop the Batman wouldn't be easy. Green Lantern was still in hospital from when he tried to talk to the monster. But that was the true reason they were there. Batman had crossed a line and he would have to suffer the consequences. The dark vigilante was making everyone nervous. In short, he was setting a bad example.
Superman had wanted to go alone but Diana had insisted on tagging along. He had no idea where Plastic Man was but in all honesty he didn't really think taking the nutcase along was a good idea. So the two metas were going alone, flying over the city, trying to draw him out. They had no idea where they could have started looking for him so they simply decided getting him to come to them would be easiest.
The air crackled with the electricity of a lightning storm and every now and then a flash would light up the black sky. It made the cesspool city look even more ominous. The city lights glittered below them and Gotham almost looked like a place worth being in. A place with promise. Superman knew differently though. Gotham breathed violence and blood and pain. It was a place of the corrupt, the criminals, and the Batman. He wished he was back in Metropolis.
A scream pierced the air and Superman's flight pattern changed directions almost as fast as his head swiveled towards the sound. Wonder Woman followed directly behind him. They came upon a frightening yet common scene in today's world fairly quickly. A woman, a teen really, was pressed up against the wall, four burly men surrounding her. There was a stench of alcohol, drugs, and sex about them. Superman guessed the girl to be a prostitute if her barely there clothes were anything to go by.
Weapons clattered on the pavement as the owners crumpled to the ground from the swift blows to their heads by the two heroes. Wonder Woman looked up from the man she was sneering at when she heard a sniffle come from the girl they'd just saved. She tried to give a small smile, feeling a distinct pity for what the woman had to suffer in man's world. The Amazon gave a small step forward testing the waters but the girl only looked at her with wide, shocked eyes.
Diana stepped closer still and reached out her hand in a general kind of helping way.
"Stay away!" the girl screamed out, her shock turning into fear. "Don't touch me you fucking freak!" With that she pushed off from the wall and ran down the street, ignoring the rain as it began to fall full force. They watched her disappear around the corner before Superman spoke again.
"C'mon," he said. "Let's keep going."
They pushed the incident from their minds and continued on their way. A few blocks over there was a robbery. They intervened. Then there was a kidnapping. They intervened. Then there was a fire. They intervened. There was a gang fight, a hostage situation, a drunken fight in a park, a four car pile up, a bank robbery. They intervened.
"This city is a cesspool of crime and debauchery," Wonder Woman said harshly as they rested on top of a tall building somewhere near the center of the city. Superman had tuned his superhearing into the goings on of the city. There were screams, sirens, gunshots. It sounded like a nightmare. At the sound of his companion's voice, his hearing snapped back to his present location and he opened his mouth to answer. He was interrupted.
"You know nothing of this city." They whirled around at the dark voice coming from the shadows behind them. Batman.
"Show yourself," Diana commanded. There was a small movement in the shadows and suddenly he was standing before them in all his darkened glory.
"We've been looking for you," Superman said.
"I know," he responded. "I've been following you. Quite the acts of heroism." Diana sneered at the sarcastic tone.
"Do you understand why we're here?" she asked.
"Yes," he said coldly. "You're here to try and stop me."
"Try?" the Amazon asked, amused at the challenge from what she considered a weak man. Superman wasn't so sure. He'd already taken down a man who was supposed to be stronger than he was. This was no weakling.
"You've crossed a line Batman," the alien said, inserting himself into the conversation. "You need to answer for it."
"I'm not the one who put the idiot in the hospital," he replied, almost sounding amused but the coldness prevented it from sounding so. "I have nothing to answer for."
"What about all the others you've put in the hospital?" Superman challenged. "What about them?"
"They deserved it." The alien's eyes narrowed at the harsh finality of his sentence. It sounded cold, heartless, murderous. He didn't like it in any way. The two stared at each other as Superman tried to rally another argument and Batman dared him to continue. They were distracted by an explosion about four blocks away. The two heroes looked away on instinct to see where it had happened. There was a gaping hole with smoke billowing out of it in a tall, lavish building. When they turned their attention back to where Batman was they found the spot empty. He was gone.
The two heroes went about their business at the site of the explosion. If they had expected Batman to make an appearance, they were solely mistaken. He never showed and that, if nothing else, infuriated Diana the most. Brutal acts of violence were one thing, deliberately turning his back on those in need of him was quite another. It didn't matter that at that time of night there was hardly anyone there and those that were on the premise escaped without assistance. It was simply the principle of the matter.
"Hey! You in the cape!" The two towards the sound of the angry sounding shout to see a police officer barreling through the crowd towards them.
"Yes, Officer?" Superman inquired in his forever polite tone. The man scowled at them.
"What the hell are you doin' here? No vigilantes!" he shouted over the sound of the wailing sirens and collapsing building pieces.
"Excuse me?" Superman replied, his eyebrows crinkled in a slight confusion.
"You heard me," the human snapped. "No vigilantes allowed in Gotham. Get back to where it is you came from. Consider this a warning; next time you'll be arrested." Diana was indignant at the thought of this puny man actually arresting her for anything. However, before her temper could rear its head Superman had already dismissed the cop and the two were speeding back through the air. They perched on a gargoyle on top of yet another tall building.
"How dare he presume to have authority over us," Wonder Woman snapped, still indignant.
"He's an officer of the law Diana," the alien responded distractedly, "and we are not. He technically does have an authority over us." She glared at him but didn't press the issue.
"What are you doing?" she asked noting the rather blank look on his face.
"Scanning the voices of Gotham," he replied. "Now that I know Batman's voice, I should be able to find him." In the end it took over an hour but he eventually caught a brief conversation between Batman and some man. It sounded like an interrogation. Alerting his companion the two made their way to the man's location with all haste.
They arrived to a beating. Batman had a grungy looking man pinned to the wall by the throat, slowly squeezing the air out and demanding some sort of answer. Wonder Woman didn't hesitate by dissecting the situation, she simply threw the first punch. Batman dodged and blocked the sudden onslaught but for all his obvious skill he couldn't keep up with an Amazon and a Kryptonian. Not on this playing field. So he turned and fled.
The battle between the two ended up on the roof. Superman did nothing but watch. He wasn't needed and he saw no reason to step in. That was until Diana turned brutal. Her fists flew faster than the eye could follow and Batman was unable to block more than a spare few. The last punch landed him square in the jaw and the impact threw him off the building and into the alleyway below. Superman couldn't say why he hesitated, just that he did, and thus hadn't prevented the fall in any way.
"Diana!" he roared at her. She turned back towards him, her lip bloodied and her pupils dilated from adrenaline. The human had made his own injuries to the Princess but it didn't seem too bad. Superman was on the ground in an instant. Standing over the Batman's unconscious body, not entirely sure of what to do from there.
His hesitation proved to be the most insightful mistake he'd ever had.
There was a small movement by a dumpster and he glanced over to see a boy, clearly homeless, rise slowly from his crouching position. He was dirty and ill looking. He was far too young to be out on these streets by himself. His wide eyes were staring at the Batman in a way Superman hadn't thought possible. He looked worried. He ignored the alien in favor for kneeling at the dark man's side. He never touched him, just stared at him. When he turned his face back up to the hero, Superman saw tears sliding down his face.
"What did you do?" the child whispered. Superman found himself at a loss for words. That was when he became aware of others in the alleyway. Some were filtering off the street, having heard the commotion, others appeared to be in the same situation as the boy. All were wide eyed. The whispering didn't go unheard by the hero.
What happened?
Who is this guy?
Did he do this?
Is he dead? Is Batman dead?
Can't be. Please, god, the city was just starting to get safer.
What now?
Why? Why would he do this?
Who the hell cares? Did nothing but get in our way.
Johnny why don't you ever think with something besides your penis? Whose gonna stop those bastard cops now?
What did you do?
There was a weight of guilt that descended on him as he listened to the whispered conversations and exclamations of the people around him. Some of it stuck out more than others. Had they misjudged the Batman? It was entirely possible. Superman thought about everything he'd seen that night. The utter chaos and the violence this city had. He hadn't really seen a good person in the entire night. He knew something was wrong with this city, everybody did. Gotham had long demonized itself with its own sins. These streets were brutal but the entire time he had thought that Batman was only adding to the brutality. Had he been wrong?
There was a gasp as the boy fell away from the body of the Batman. He never made a sound, never showed a sign that he was in pain. The crowd fell silent as he simply stood up and disappeared in the shadows at the back of the alley as the sounds of sirens came within hearing distance. Everybody dispersed quickly after that. After all, nobody wanted to have anything to do with a Gotham cop. Especially not in this neighborhood.
Superman had sent Wonder Woman home. The Amazon hadn't given as much protest as she normally would have. She had seen the look on the child's face and heard the whispers of the crowd just as he had. It wasn't lost on her that they may have misjudged not only the Batman but the people of Gotham. The Kryptonian had been perched on top one of the many gargoyles listening to the city.
It pulsed with a darkness he had never felt. There was something destructive and dangerous lying beneath its grimy surface. He could feel it. He could hear its people and its streets. Word about what had happened had spread through the neighborhood known as Crime Alley like wildfire. The Batman had survived Superman and it seemed to only help his reputation. Superman heard criminals fretting and innocent people thanking whatever deity they prayed to and even ones they didn't.
For a city that was ridden with the worst, the alien heard an unprecedented amount of hope. He had never heard of so many people in such a bad situation talk with so much hope and it was not lost on him on who gave that hope. The Batman. The only darkness in this place that seemed to stand for the people and not against them.
There seemed to be an unanimous consensus that the police were not the people's friend. With the Batman beating many police men into a bloody pulp, the people had found a shield. The only symbol of hope in a decade. And Superman wanted to stop him. Because the alien had principles and no matter what the people thought, there was a line. Batman had crossed it.
"What do you hear?"
The voice snapped him out of his thoughts and his head snapped towards it. On the next gargoyle over was a girl, a teenager, in what looked to be a female version of the Batman's suit. Only this one didn't appear to be made of life saving armor. It was homemade.
"Who are you?" he asked her his eyes unconsciously drawn to her long red hair as the wind picked it up and blew it around her masked face.
"Doesn't matter," she said. "Names never matter in this city."
The alien was itching to use his powers to look through the mask and to her face but something held him back. Something had held him back with the Batman too. He couldn't place what it was.
"What do you hear?" she asked again.
"Everything," he responded. "This city is broken."
"You don't know anything about this city," she snarled. "Just because it's not Metropolis doesn't mean it's broken."
"Then how would you describe this city?" he asked, genuinely curious as to her answer. But she didn't answer. She didn't even look at him. "Well?"
"It's not broken," she said and he could tell she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince him. "Go home, Superman. You don't belong here."
"Why not?" he asked. "What's so different about this place?"
"Gotham has a history you know nothing about," she replied. "She is the way she is for a reason. It takes some people a lifetime to learn that reason. Even with all your superpowers I doubt you will find that reason in one night."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that you're an outsider," she told him, finally looking him in the eye. "You don't belong here. You and you're little Wonder friend could have destroyed the best thing this city has seen in a long time and all because he doesn't conform to your standard of hero."
He didn't try to defend himself against that. He knew she was right, on every account. He didn't like the Batman's methods on any level; they were violent and terrifying but he thought he was beginning to understand them. The city needed something and he doubted that the answer lied with someone like him.
He turned to ask her another question but found the gargoyle empty. His gaze found the fluttering curtain of the window she had undoubtedly used. Giving her no more thought he turned back towards the city and listened as sirens wailed, music played, people shouted, screamed, and laughed. He looked to the street below him and spotted a girl with red hair, much like the hair of the Batgirl he'd been speaking to. She was in civilain clothes now and her face was turned away.
"Go home Superman. This is our city." Her whispered words were carried to him by the wind but he ignored them. Batman had put a member of the Justice League in the hospital. He had things to answer for that had very little to do with the city itself. He wasn't here because of Gotham. He was here because the Batman was hurting people. Some who didn't deserve to be hurt.
And he would be the last person to allow it to continue.
But as the sun rose, its rays peeking above the tallest buildings and reflecting off the glass, the city seemed to rise with it. He saw men and women, normal people, heading to work their heads held high despite the danger they lived in. The story of the Batman had circulated throughout the city. Superman could see the hope and the perseverance of a people who lived in hard times. The hero was no stranger to hard times and he knew that eventually times got better.
Maybe that held true for Gotham as well. He didn't see the solution and maybe that girl had been right. He didn't belong here and it was because he didn't belong here that he wouldn't be able to help. Batman belonged here, there was no denying it.
With that last thought he rose from his perch and flew home. He'd watch the situation, to see if anything changed. But for now, this wasn't his city and it wasn't his fight. It belonged to the Batman, the man they whispered about in dark corners and alleyways. The man who was bringing something back to this city. Life.