Chapter Text
Silence. All around him, there was silence.
He was on a beach. Maybe. Small rocks and shards of glass and what felt like sand pressed into and agitated his open wounds with every shaky breath he took. Wasn't a very well kept beach if he had to guess, based on the pieces of seaweed that stuck to his torn skin like a bandage. Water encased his legs up to the knee. His left leg stung all over. Must be the ocean that he's near, then. Every wave that came gliding over his legs sent shocks of pain through them. Salt in the water. A cold wind brushed across his face. It felt like pieces of skin peeled back as it did. He smelled blood.
The wind carried a piece of paper close enough to his fingertips for him to feel it. It took a bit of struggle, but he was able to curl his fingers around the paper tight enough to hold it. He brought it up to his face- he'd figured out that he couldn't move his neck a long time ago. It was dark, and he didn't have his glasses, so reading it wasn't easy. On the paper was a list of names. Names he recognized and recognized well.
Joker. Top of the list. Figures. He always was when it came to Gotham’s Worst.
Bane. Alphabetical, then? Save for the Clown Prince of Crime, of course. Attention whore.
Cobblepot, Oswald. Last name, first name. So that could only mean…
Crane, Jonathan. His name. He was pretty sure that was his name. It felt familiar. Yes, that was his name. And his name was circled in angry red ink. Next to his name were three big letters written in the same pen.
“MPD”. An acronym that could mean a lot of things. But this paper had the seal of the Gotham City Police Department on it. It could only mean one thing.
“Missing, Presumed Dead”. Ah. So he was missing. And most thought he was dead. Why? Why did people think him a dead man? He was not dead. He did not think he was dead. He brought a hand up to his chest. Yes, his heart still beat. His chest still rose and fell in that shaky rhythm that made his ribs ache. And yet even the Gotham police presumed him dead. Who else thought him dead? Or, more importantly, who else knew him alive?
His eyes drifted up. There were multiple seals at the top of the paper. The one on the left, of the GCPD. The one on the right, City of Gotham. But the one in the middle was one he did not recognize. It looked like the emblem of the Asylum at first glance. But instead of saying "Arkham Asylum", it said,
"Arkham City". Arkham... City? He didn't even know what that was supposed to mean. It bore the name of Amadeus Arkham, the infamous founder of the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. But City? Had the Asylum been torn down and turned into its own miniature city? Was the Asylum being expanded to the size of a city? It was already massive for an insane asylum, it took up about the same amount of land as the farm he grew up on. Had something happened to the Asylum that warranted the movement of its prisoners to this so-called "Arkham City"? What had happened? What happened at the Asylum after he was...
Questions. The questions made his head hurt. So he closed his eyes.
There was darkness, and there was silence. All around him, there was
silence.