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Batman does not kill people.
Batman does NOT kill people.
Batman does not KILL people.
Except.
Batman doesn’t NOT kill people.
Jim Gordon never brings it up. He keeps it out of the press and minimizes it in his reports. He’s not covering things up, not exactly. It’s just. Not police brutality. It’s brutality. Deserved, sure. Self-defense, he tells himself.
He’s not so sure a lawyer would see it the same way. He knows it is one of the many reasons the mask will always remain. He has his suspicions, of course. Always had. But never blatant confirmation, and it’s better that way. Batman doesn’t kill people, but he isn’t above maiming.
When a few thugs or lackeys are on ventilators in the hospital, sometimes they develop secondary pneumonia.
And yet others suffer massive internal bleeding. The aorta travels the length of the torso. Aortic dissection is quick. Not exactly painless, but quick.
Grey Turner’s sign. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. Kidneys bruise. Livers lacerate.
The spleen ruptures easily. So easily, that its one of the first things often checked with an ultrasound in motor vehicular accidents when there is bleeding but they can’t locate the source externally. Also at Gotham General, when the ambulances bring in that evening’s casualties from crime scenes, cut down from the rafters.
Traumatic brain injuries are their own category. The brain is a delicate organ. Sometimes a punch to the face is a little too hard. Something tears. Something detaches.
Sometimes they bleed slowly, over days or weeks. Sometime there is a clot, an embolism, from another part of the body that travels and gets stuck, days, weeks, months later.
Being knocked out is no joke. Sometimes they just. Don’t wake up.
A pneumothorax. When the lungs are inflated and there is a hard blow to the chest, they can rupture. It’s life threatening when it turns into a tension pneumothorax, where pressure builds from trapped air and begins pressing against the heart and veins. Every breath taken worsens the issue, until there is no room left. Rapid decompression with a needle or chest tube buys time, deflating the chest like a balloon.
Sometimes the ambulances don’t get there fast enough.
And sometimes they do.
The military sends its medics and surgeons to New York, Baltimore, Chicago, to learn how to work on injuries they may see in combat zones across the ocean. And of course, Gotham was always a hot spot, and the most sought after by so-called ‘trauma junkies’. So when rumors of the Batman started all those years ago, and certain patterns of injuries increased, no one said anything. They just kept sending their students. Good educational experience, after all.
It’s Gotham’s best and worst kept secret.
Batman doesn’t directly kill people. He has a code. But sometimes… there are casualties.
Jason Todd brings it up one day, tauntingly, his eyes flashing under the red hood. Begging for justification. Bruce grits his teeth, anger flaring right back. He could not explain why it was different. To be indirectly responsible. Why it didn’t count against his code.
The Martha Wayne Foundation makes generous donations to the trauma center and the respective ICUs within.
…
The World’s Greatest Detective is not ignorant.
Batman does not have a body count. Not an intentional one.
Early on he finds he has trouble finding sympathy for them. He wonders what that makes him.
Sometimes he wakes up and even makes it to the bathroom before he vomits, his sweat a sheen across his marred back. Batman does not lose control. Except when he does. And sometimes a punch is too hard. A kick is too strong. A broken arm is not just a broken arm when a fatty embolism makes its way to the heart.
He keeps tabs on the hospital records, an algorithm picking up on emergency room visits, looking for patterns. Their security systems are strong. And provided by Wayne Enterprises. He is not ignorant.
He resolves to do better, be more refined. Less deadly. Invest in less lethal tricks.
Sometimes it works.
He tries to pass his caution onto his Robins.
Sometimes it works.
He does not tell them about the hospital records. He does not want them to be too cautious. He doesn’t want them to overthink and pull a punch that would otherwise save their lives. He stresses non-lethal. Various disabling pressure points.
And.
And he shows them the lethal hollows on the human body. The temples, nicknamed “God’s Little Joke” by neurosurgeons, where a major artery runs beneath the thinnest part of the cranium. The hollow of the throat, where a well aimed punch will collapse a trachea.
He likes to think he would trade the casualty of a thug, of a villain, for the life and wellbeing of his Robins.
Jason Todd’s uniform sits accusingly.
The Red Hood shouts at him. Accusingly.
Intent, he tells himself. The secret to the code is Intent.
Batman does not kill people. Robins do not kill people.
Manslaughter is not the same as homicide.