"Good night, Light."
"Have a great one, Ravi."
The words left my mouth with the practiced ease of a man who had learned that a smile could be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Ravi was wiping down the bar, his easy grin flashing under the dim lounge lights like a beacon for the desperate and the damned.
He was good people or at least, good enough for Gotham. Charming in that effortless way that made patrons linger, made them open their wallets and their mouths.
That charm was his chain. Cobblepot knew it.
The Penguin always knew where the real value lay, and he kept his best assets right where they could generate the most quiet profit.
I would never be him.
I slipped my phone from my bag, the screen lighting up with a single notification:
Barb. G [1].
I stared at it for a moment, thumb hovering, then shoved it into my pocket.
Not tonight. Some conversations were better left to rot in the dark.
The thunder came down hard outside, a low growl that vibrated through the bones of the city.
Rain began to drizzle, then pour, turning the streets into black mirrors that reflected Gotham's neon sickness back at itself.
I opened the black umbrella with a snap, the sound crisp against the downpour.
The city's weather was as unpredictable as its people, one moment calm, the next a storm that drowned everything it touched.
You learned to carry failsafes. Always.
The neon lights bled across the pavement in garish pinks and toxic greens, promising escape, pleasure and oblivion.
Wrap hell as a gift, tie sacrifice as a bow, and people will still tear it open to see what's inside.
That was Gotham's true religion.
A cackle cut through the rain.
A man sprinted past me, face painted white like a cheap Joker knockoff, waving a glowing glitter stick like it was the Holy Grail.
"Hahahaha!" He was high on something, eyes wild with that particular madness that blurred the line between performance and psychosis.
"Stop running!" An officer yelled behind him, radio crackling, breath ragged.
The cop's body was already failing him, too many donuts, too many nights like this.
I stepped aside smoothly, letting them pass.
Not the real Joker.
The real one wouldn't be chased by beat cops; he'd be orchestrating their deaths from the shadows with a smile… or he would be running, who knows.
But these imitators were symptoms and the disease ran deeper.
Further down the block, another scene unfolded under flashing red and blue.
A man pressed against a squad car hood, hands cuffed, glitter smeared across his clown paint like some grotesque parody of joy.
"Arghh! Let me go!"
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. His face was twisted in rage.
"What are you looking at, you fucking freak?!"
I looked away, but inside, I smiled.
Freak, he called me. The irony was almost poetic. A clown-faced fool with glitter sticks calling me, the freak while the blue boys beat him down with batons.
Gotham's mirror never lied if you knew how to look.
The multiple sirens that passed me, third one in under a minute, dragged old memories to the surface like bodies from the river.
Jim Gordon.
My father's partner.
After Dad died, Jim tried to step in, all duty and quiet guilt.
I didn't take it well.
Words like knives 'You could never be my dad. I wish it was you instead of him.'
He had his own failures with his son James, projecting them onto me, I projected my grief and rage onto him.
We parted before the poison could fully set.
Complicated. Everything in this city was.
"Somebody please help me!"
"Shut your ass up, bitch!"
"Please, I got a wife!"
"Stay quiet and this'll be over soon. Big Terry doesn't like bitches!"
The alley screamed with the usual nocturnal opera. I kept walking, umbrella steady, rain drumming a relentless rhythm against the fabric.
The Garment District wore its decline like an ill-fitting suit, still presentable from a distance, but fraying at the seams if you looked too closely.
I looked up at the rundown condos with curtains hanging apart like half-drawn eyelids on corpses.
Each window told its own small tragedy: a flickering television casting blue light across a woman's hollow face, a child's silhouette rocking in silence, an old man staring into nothing with the thousand-yard stare of someone who had already died years ago.
They were all different, yet they shared the same common marrow, misery.
Slow grinding, inevitable misery.
The Garment District was not yet truly miserable. Not like the East End, where hope had been carved out with knives, or Downtown, where the city ate its young.
Here it was only sliding, a slow descent into the abyss that still offered the illusion of comfort, cheap rent, fewer junkies on the corner, the faint pretense that tomorrow might be different.
Crime here was transactional: extortion dressed as protection, robberies committed with a certain weary professionalism, the occasional arson to collect insurance or send a message.
That was why the gun pressed against my spine felt almost insulting.
"Do not turn. Walk quietly into the alley and no one gets hurt."
The voice was low, rough with nerves and cheap liquor.
I let out a slow, measured sigh and obeyed.
It was stupid to resist, stupider to play hero.
Heroes died in alleys like this every night, their idealism pooling in the rainwater alongside their blood.
I walked deeper into the darkness, far enough that the streetlights became distant memories and any screams would be swallowed by the rain and the indifferent brick.
"Stop. That's enough."
My steps slowed to a halt, I felt his hand reach for the umbrella.
I let it go without resistance and he tossed it aside with a clatter that echoed loudly in the narrow space.
Rain struck me immediately, cold, soaking through my clothes until the fabric clung.
He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, slamming me back against the wet brick with his forearm.
The muzzle of the pistol dug into my chest, right over the heart.
His face was hidden behind a makeshift mask, a dirty cloth tied around the lower half, a cheap baseball cap pulled low.
Only his eyes showed, wide, jittery, the pupils dilated with fear and the animal need to survive another night in this rotting city.
His hands moved over me with clumsy greed, pockets, waist, calves, searching for anything worth the risk he was taking.
I remained perfectly still, observing him the way one might observe a particularly desperate insect beating itself against glass.
"Wallet," I said quietly, tilting my head down toward my jacket.
He snorted, a wet, ugly sound, and fished it out.
Fifty-two dollars. I always carried exactly that amount for occasions like this, too little and you enraged them, made them feel mocked.
Too much and you became a prize worth killing for, Fifty-two dollars bought a meal, a night under a roof, and just enough resentment to keep the transaction human.
He took the cash, tossed the wallet into the darkness like discarded trash.
"What's in the bag?"
"Nothing. Work clothes." I shrugged, voice calm.
"Drop it."
I complied. He crouched, zipper rasping open, hands rummaging through the damp fabric.
Shit, I forgot something.
He froze.
"What the fuck?"
My hand drifted slowly towards my back.
He pulled out my father's badge, the metal catching what little light existed in that godforsaken alley.
The sight of it seemed to offend him personally.
"Are you a fucking cop?"
A soft fluttering sound cut through the rain, like pages turning in a wind that shouldn't exist.
Something fell from above, landing with a wet plop in the puddle beside us. No windows. No rooftops occupied. Just the object, black and thick, glistening with rain.
The mugger glanced up, distracted for that critical half-second.
I moved.
My hand shoved his gun arm wide. .
The pistol discharged with a deafening crack, the bullet whining harmlessly into the brick. In the same fluid motion, my Glock was in my hand.
The failsafe I never left home without.
What happened next had no thought behind it, only pure instinct.
The bullet struck him center mass.
The impact lifted him slightly, a wet crack of ruptured tissue and shattered bone.
His legs folded like a puppet with cut strings, and he collapsed backward, head striking the pavement with a dull, final thud.
Rain immediately began washing the blood away from the entry wound, diluting it into pale pink rivulets that snaked toward the gutter.
He did not move again. His chest remained still.
I stood there for several heartbeats, listening to the rain and the distant sirens.
No remorse stirred in me, only recognition of another small extinction in a city built on them.
I gathered my belongings with deliberate care, the umbrella, the emptied wallet, and the scattered clothes.
His pistol went into my bag.
The bullet casing I never found, but in Gotham such evidence was usually irrelevant.
The GCPD had larger horrors to ignore.
Then I saw it clearly for the first time.
A thick, black notebook lying in the puddle where it had fallen.
White lettering etched across the cover like an accusation, it read.
"Death Note?"
I don't have time for this bullshit.
I picked it up, the cover was strangely dry despite the downpour, as if the rain itself refused to touch it.
I turned it over in my hands once and stuffed the notebook into my bag, pulled the dead man's cap low over my eyes to obscure my face from any potential cameras, and walked out of the alley without looking back.
My own pistol returned to its holster.
The rain continued its indifferent drumming.
By the time I reached my building, the adrenaline had faded into a cool, analytical hum.
I rang the bell, forcing my breathing into a steady rhythm.
The fidgeting stopped and my mask slipped back into place.
The door opened slowly.
"You really gotta take your key with you, Light."
"Why? It's not like you go out anytime." I turned with the ghost of a smile, but it dissolved into a deadpan when I saw her. "You really gotta stop stealing my clothes, Quin."
Harleen stood there wearing nothing but one of my oversized hoodies, blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, glasses perched on her nose.
She looked far too comfortable in my hoodie.
"Hey, I'm not stealing it!" she protested as I grumbled and headed for my room. "The laundry's not working. I'm gonna sue that bastard one day."
"Good luck with that."
I dropped the bag heavily, collapsed onto the bed, and stared at the cracked ceiling.
Rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers seeking entry.
The city outside never slept.
It was a living thing, it was a plague it festered and hungered and it consumed.
This world is rotten.