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Zofia Bacsik has lived in her little apartment for almost fifty years now. She raised five children in the little three bedroom apartment, after her husband died in Vietnam, and she's old enough now that she's buried three of her children, and helped raise five of her seventeen grandchildren. She's been blessed enough to hold all seven of her great-grandchildren, and -if she makes it another three months- she'll get to see her first great-great grandchild.
All within the walls of this little three bedroom apartment. She's thought a few times about downsizing; about switching to one of the smaller apartments upstairs, one of the one bedroom ones.
She doesn't. She never will. As much as she thinks about it, she likes having the spares. It comes in useful, like when Annie -her fourth grandchild -split from her abusive, no-good pizda husband of hers, after he beat her black and blue in front of Zofia's great-grandbaby.
Besides… the neighbors wouldn't know what to do without her. Because despite her five children, seventeen grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and the impending arrival of her first great-great-granchild… She's seen almost four generations of families come and go in this apartment building.
She's survived the building changing hands three different times in fifty-two years, the flood of '83 that nearly destroyed the whole city, the hurricane of '91 that nearly destroyed the whole city, and a fire started by some idiot college kid in '04.
There are adults living in this building who she held as babies. She knows her neighbors birthdays, she knows their kids, their grandkids, their schedules, and their quirks.
She knows that little Tommy Campbell upstairs grew up to be just like his daddy, and likes to beat on his wife when he gets drunk. She knows Jasmine Jones three doors down doesn't actually make her cornbread like her grandma taught her, and just buys it instead for the neighborhood bakesales. She knows that Kenny Buschard on the top floor isn't a bad kid, just a little slow in the head, like his mama was, and for all his big size, he cries when he sees dead frogs.
And she knows that Richard Grayson, who lives across the hallway from her, is a lonely, lonely young man.
Oh, sure, she knows who he actually is of course. That his adopted daddy is some big yuppie in Gotham, who likes to plaster his name across any public building it'll fit on. She knows that Richard is supposed to be some sort of airhead pretty boy, more smiles than brains.
But he's a good boy. Always so kind, and polite. His Polish is a little rusty, clearly half-remembered words from his days with his parents in the circus, but he's been brushing up just for her. He's outside at three PM on the dot, every Friday, when she comes back with her two bags of groceries, and he helps carry them to her apartment, and puts them away for her.
And he always stays to chat afterwards. She makes raisin cookies with real honey while he sits and has tea with her, and they chat about her family.
He rarely ever talks about his own, and he always looks sad when he does. She's learned not to ask.
And she knows it's not her place. That the boy isn't one of hers, and it's none of her business, but it's a darn good thing Bruce Wayne has never tried to visit his adopted son at his apartment. Because Zofia has thoughts about Mr. Wayne, and his relationship with his son. She has opinions on it, and Lord knows, she tries to be a good, polite, kind woman, but sometimes she views Richard trudging up the steps of their building, and she thinks she'd like to shake Mr. Bruce Wayne like a coconut.
She worries about Richard, and well… somebody ought to worry about the boy. Somebody should've taught the poor thing how to take care of himself, how to make friends, how to cook, how to clean, before they just sent him off all on his ownsome.
Why, the first time she met the poor thing, he was staring at his used-to-be-white-now-faded-pink colored t-shirts down in the communal laundry room. Less than a month after that, he'd come over and asked her to borrow her vacuum cleaner, because his was 'smelling funny'.
It didn't 'smell funny', so much as he'd burnt the motor out, after a long piece of string got all tangled up inside, and he'd kept trying to vacuum with it.
And the boy has no life outside of his job. He never has anyone over, not even women. He's never once brought anyone inside, not a female friend, or his father, or his brothers that she's read about in the papers.
The last few months, he hasn't even really left the apartment, aside from meeting her outside Friday at three to help with her groceries. And Lord help her, but she thinks sometimes about paying the money for a taxi to Gotham, all the way to that big fancy house in Bristol, so she can shake the teeth right out of Bruce Wayne's head.
She doesn't, and she won't. But she can think about it.
Because the poor thing clearly isn't well. He's floundering, coasting along just keeping himself floating, but nothing else, and Zofia knows better than most that that's no way to live.
People need purpose. They need socialization. They need reasons to get out of bed in the morning. And as near as she can tell, Richard doesn't have any.
One of her grandbabies, Michael, got to be that way. She tried warning her daughter and son-in-law that the boy needed some help. That something was wrong, and they needed to do something. They didn't listen to her -Maria was always a stubborn, bull-headed child -and one day, Zofia had gotten a call from her youngest daughter, Emilia, that said Michael was in the hospital.
He'd shot himself in the head with his daddy's gun. Brain-dead. Comatose. Vegetative state. A lot of words to say that his body might've survived, but what made Michael Michael -his laugh, his quick wit, and sharp tongue -were gone.
They'd taken him off life-support after two days. He'd been declared dead less than twenty minutes later.
And Zofia wonders, every day, if she'd pushed Maria and Nathan more, if she'd been more forceful in her worries, if Michael would still be alive. If her beautiful, bouncy, happy grandbaby with the bucktoothed smile he never really grew into would still be alive.
She won't let that happen again. And especially not with a nice young boy like Richard.
So when he doesn't show up to take her trash out at exactly seven AM sharp on Tuesday morning… she gathers up her little keyring, and marches across the hall to his apartment. She's not going to let Richard isolate himself, all alone, sitting in his little apartment. Not like Michael did. She won't let it happen again, not a second time. She won't bear the guilt of that.
She's not surprised when he doesn't answer the door when she knocks. However, the way she views it? If he doesn't want her checking up on him… he shouldn't have given her a key.
So she unlocks the door, and steps inside.