Chapter Text
Before
The moment she’d emerged onto the rooftop of the Monarch, Sarah had collapsed just out of sight of the GCPD officers below and wrenched off her domino to properly have those precious few seconds to breathe.
Breathe. Breathe, Sarah. You have to breathe.
There was no coming back from that. It had been her hands, her guns, her choice that had killed the Joker.
He’d already been dying - from what, she didn’t know - and she had dealt the killing blow.
For Jason. I won’t regret that.
“Phoenix? Pho-“ She curled her knees against her chest and swept a hand across her eyes before sliding the domino back into place. “Phoenix, this is N. Please respond before you send me into a premature coronary.”
Her voice was quiet when she finally did find the strength to reply, “Phoenix here. Go ahead N.”
“Oh, thank God- Robin and I were getting worried. Where are you?”
“Top of the Monarch. About to make my way out of the city,” Sarah slowly moved to her feet and removed her grappling gun from her utility belt. “Meet me at the nook at home, N.”
“Roger that.”
***
With Bruce being left behind to attend to the fallout of Arkham City, all three of his children headed for home without so much as a goodbye to their father. Batman did not need Robin, Nightwing, and Phoenix to help him clean up his mess.
He would do it himself.
“Where did she say she’d be?” Tim asked, scrubbing his hands over his face as he and Dick emerged from the grandfather clock. “We didn’t see her on the way out of the city-“
“The Nook,” Dick replied. “That place that J found when he was younger. It’s on the farthest side of the house looking out toward Gotham.”
Jason had deemed it the Bat Kids’ secret hideout whenever he was younger, and they had never uttered a word of it to either Bruce or Alfred. It was too sacred. Not to mention that it was often where they found themselves after… difficult missions.
It was better than enduring their father’s scorn.
“There she is.” Tim carefully pointed a finger toward the window where he could see the top of Sarah’s head. The two brothers carefully maneuvered out the window and took a seat on either side of the dingy rug their sister was occupying as she cleaned her guns. “Sarah?”
“Hm.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
Dick frowned as he picked up his little sister’s hand and turned it palm upward. “Tim’s right,” Dick said. “What’s going on?”
Her domino was placed beside her foot, as were both silencers she used on her pistols. “I don’t think either of you wants to know the answer to that,” She said quietly. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of myself.”
“You were in the city with us, going after The Joker,” Tim remarked. “B said he never saw you go into the theater. You were out on the patrol with the GCPD while he took care of Clayface inside.”
“He wouldn’t have.”
“They said Joker died with a bullet hole in his head,” Dick informed. “That’s what Commissioner Gordon told B. Thing is… they didn’t have a sniper with a clear shot to hit him. Which means someone had to have snuck inside and put that bullet in him themselves.”
Both Tim and Dick seemed to have put two and two together. If they were shocked at the revelation that Sarah had delivered both shots to the Joker and killed him without Batman seeing her, they didn’t show it.
“Are you both implying it was me?” Sarah asked, almost as if she was still trying to hide the very obvious fact that she could easily infiltrate the theater with the camouflage pack she’d kept from her old armor. “Because if it was me, I wouldn’t regret it.”
Dick was almost incapable of suppressing his laughter. Even she had inherited the terrible liar gene.
“Sarah, if you were to sit here and confess to me that you did indeed shoot The Joker in the head and save us all a world of misery, Dick and I would both sneak back inside and get the best alcohol Bruce has in the cellar just to celebrate the death of that miserable clown.”
“Tim! I am not willingly letting you drink-“
Wiping the grease off of her hands with the rag on her thigh, Sarah clucked her tongue and lightly patted her brother’s cheek. “Dickie Boo,” She mused. “For this celebration, Tim can have a drink. The clown is dead.”
She never said it outright, but Dick and Tim knew. They knew their sister had dealt the killing blow.
And they knew whom she’d done it for.
Neither of them said a word.
***
Bruce could not wipe away the sight of blood trickling down the Joker’s forehead around the bullet placed there. It was a clean shot. Carefully executed, carefully aimed, and fired without hesitation.
Batman may not use guns, sure. He may not be willing to kill either.. and many people were willing to kill The Joker.
He should’ve seen this assailant coming. He should’ve known, but he was too busy cradling Talia’s body in his arms and staring at that damned bullet hole.
And the ironic thing was, if he’d had the chance, Bruce would’ve saved him.
Coming to terms with that was probably the worst part.
***
After
As the years pass, the children of the Bat grow in different ways. Sarah Wayne is the spitting image of her birth mother and father with all the charisma of Bruce Wayne, from whom she has learned everything about the public scene. When and how to smile, whom to play with, and whom to exploit the weaknesses of.
But she never quite learns how to let go. Dick will tell you that he’s never quite met someone who carries grudges like his little sister.
Tim’s self-preservation is still ever-lacking. That lonely, lost little boy who’d grown up in the tombs of Drake Manor never quite learned one very simple truth: He had a purpose, he was loved, and people wanted him there. That his family wanted him there.
But he never quite learns how to take care of himself. He’s the sharpest, the smartest, the Robin who figured out who Batman and the first Robin were before anyone else did. He’s the Robin who tries to live up to the name that Dick and Jason made of it.
And Dick, well… Dick always carries too much. That’s not something he’ll ever be able to stop doing. He is the eldest, so he has to be the strongest of the three and he has to be emotionally available and willing to be the mediator when conflict rises. He’s insecure in his position and his purpose as Batman, and he wants for everyone but himself.
These are the children of Bruce Wayne. So vastly loved, but so wholly damaged.
Nine months ago, Joker was cremated. I pressed the button and burnt him to a crisp myself. And then we waited. Gotham braced itself for the inevitable power struggle.
It didn’t come. Crime fell. Deep down, I knew the war was coming. I was just waiting for someone to pull the trigger.
It all starts again whenever Sarah turns 26. It comes around the fall after her birthday, never having gone to college or pursuing her dream. It’s Halloween. Nothing good ever happens in Gotham on Halloween.
Bruce has whisked Tim away to Panessa to work on the cure for their four living Jokers - Charisma, Bell, Henry, and King - and has not let him leave. It’s been months since Arkham City and Bruce is convinced there is a cure for the blood infection they were victimized by.
It’s terrifying how similar they are to him. It’s almost like his consciousness was implanted into four different bodies.
Scarecrow’s threat worked. Yesterday there were 6.3 million people in Gotham City. Today, not so many. The only people left are the sort that enjoys the chaos. Scum. Criminals. Not enough good people left to stop them.
The threat has moved past The Joker. Now they’re on the lookout for Scarecrow, who unleashed such a threat upon Gotham that everyone had been evacuated.
Everyone except the criminals and the Bats.
It took just twenty-four hours for us to lose control of the city. Tonight, Gotham is relying on one man to save us all.
If you didn’t know it already, Batman has a savior complex. That alone is the reason why he never asks his partners for help, even when he so sorely needs it. Doing this, being this, is one of the very few things left in his life that satisfies him.
And now that he knows what he’ll become, he doesn’t have forever.
But he does have this.
***
Sarah and Tim
“Phoenix, how hard is it to analyze a few vials of blood? We need to analyze the compound that’s meant to-“
Twenty-six and still not taking crap from her baby bat, Sarah Wayne turned to look at Tim Drake - still Robin, and still wearing the uniform she’d asked Lucius to upgrade after Arkham City - standing beside the faraday cages containing Charisma and Bell.
“Yeah, P!” Christina jeered. “How hard can it be-“
Their female Joker yelped as a bright orange, serrated piece of metal came flying from seemingly out of nowhere and would have collided with the center of her face had they not been separated by bulletproof glass.
Sarah smirked as she met Bell’s eyes head-on. While Tim usually attempted to mollify the hostile environment, Sarah was the one who usually tended to antagonize them just to see if they’d try to retaliate because she was a Bat.
She could see it though. They weren’t afraid of Nightwing, Robin, not Batman. They were afraid of her.
That felt good.
They knew that she had very little reservations about a well-placed bullet in the head to all four of them. The world would’ve been better off for it. Cleansing Gotham of Joker’s influence would surely make it a more suitable environment, just the very beginning of making their city a better place to raise children.
A better place to live, not just survive.
“It’s not hard at all, Bell.” She snapped. “I can analyze blood all day long and be here to be, I quote, “the bodyguard.’’ But I am not bright enough to do what Robin is currently doing. That is why he was placed on Joker duty.”
Tim glared at her through his domino. She was so angry. He knew this wasn’t her preferred skill set, that she would rather be out with Batman retaking the city, but Bruce was dead set that he would be retaking Gotham from the criminal underbelly by himself.
He gave her another hour before she cracked and left him alone. Always alone. Even being a Wayne for more of his life now than he’d been a Drake, Tim Drake-Wayne never quite was able to shake the feeling of never quite living up to the expectations placed upon all three of them. His crippling lack of self-preservation, Dick’s insecurity, Sarah’s anger.
What a trio they made.
Before Tim could reply, the Batcomputer rang. Both siblings snapped over to the screen as Sarah answered it and found herself greeted by Alfred’s muted panic. She’d give him massive credit. He always managed to keep himself composed whenever Bruce was in danger, but his eyes always spoke volumes more than his words ever could’ve.
“Alfred? Are we on an encrypted channel?” Sarah asked, adjusting her domino as she and Robin approached. “What’s going on?”
“Batman has been compromised. ACE Chemicals is nearly at the peak of a cataclysmic explosion, and he-“
Dread settled in her stomach as she caught Tim wince out of the corner of her eye. “What do you need me to do?”
“I’ve been asked to do research into this new vigilante he has encountered that calls himself The Arkham Knight,” Alfred replied. “Sarah, I’d like you to do the same. Start with the Arkham high-security prisoners who may have been incarcerated due to the intervention of Batman. This man seems highly trained with a personal grudge and… history.”
Well, that narrows it down.
“I’ll get right to that,” She said. “Tim is still working diligently on the cure.”
“Very good. Both of you be careful.”
He signed off before Sarah could ask him if he was all right and if Bruce needed help.
Sarah sighed and ran her hands over her face.
Tim checked his watch. Fifteen more minutes before he anticipated her fleeing to save their father from himself.
Again.
“The Arkham Knight,” She muttered, slipping to the side of the room to open her newly acquired laptop. It had nearly a decades worth of meticulous case files they’d composed solely about Arkham and its prisoners. “That’s not familiar to me. Sounds like a new piece on the board.”
“I’m sure you’ll come up with something, Sarah!” Tim called over his shoulder.
“Not all of us are as bright as you, Tim!”
****
It took her over an hour. Tim was thoroughly impressed by her determination to find a modicum of information about the Arkham Knight in their network that Oracle used. Even after Alfred had called her a second time to inform them that Bruce had survived the explosion at Ace, Sarah was still dead set on finding something.
But there was nothing. Not a shred of information to go off of that would give Bruce an idea of who The Arkham Knight was.
To them, he was just a ghost that had a vendetta and bloody history with Batman.
“That’s it.” Sarah slammed the lid of her laptop and stood to her feet. “Screw following orders. Bruce will never be able to take back Gotham alone, and if Scarecrow is intending on releasing a chemical weapon over Gotham, I will not let it happen because Bruce is too stubborn to let us help him.”
Tim knew better than to argue.
“You’re twenty-six, Sar,” Tim remarked. “You have plenty more experience than I do in watching over the skies. He’s going to be too preoccupied to properly fight you. You might be able to do more good if there are multiple people out of there putting away the criminals who are out there causing chaos. Penguin. Two-Face. Harley.”
“Harley’s back in town?!”
“Not even remotely the point-“
“Yeah, yeah. I get your point,” Slipping both pistols into the holsters on her hips, Sarah double-checked her belt and her grapple before turning towards the elevator that would lead her back outside. “I’ll keep you updated on what’s going on out there and if N decides to show back up.”
Tim’s response was quiet. “Be safe.”
Almost like he didn’t want the four Jokers in their cells who were actively listening to hear the sentimentality, be safe don’t die I love you from a little brother to his elder sister.
Sarah simply nodded and slammed her hand against the elevator button.
When the doors opened, it was raining. It was raining and there were people waiting for her and she barely had enough time to react before they were knocking her unconscious. There wasn't even time to warn Robin.
The last thing Sarah remembers is the mechanical helmet of someone wearing a suit that looked an awful lot like a Bat.
His voice is mechanical, disguised by a modulator as she's limply thrown into the back of some car.
"Put her with the wheelchair girl. They've got a long history."
It’s always raining in Gotham. Even on the bad days, it just never stops.
It makes her long for snow.