Chapter Text
Mary Fitzpatrick couldn’t remember ever hurting as much as she was hurting now.
She’s seen some bad and painful stuff and gone through worse yet none of it compares, none of it even comes close.
If she was thinking more logically it would almost seem silly. She’d only known about it a couple of weeks. She had barely started preparing because she thought she still had plenty of time left.
She was wrong.
Oh, how wrong she was.
There’s a deep ache in her chest lodged right beneath her ribs leaving her gasping for air.
The weeks after were a dark time for her. So dark, she barely remembers them.
Then it came: six colorful guiding lights in the endless dark that had become her world.
“Please,” she wept, “There must be a way.”
The lights paused, the air thick with something so ancient and powerful she was sure she couldn’t even begin to comprehend the magnitude of her current situation.
“It won’t be easy.” The lights said.
Mary knew this. She also didn’t care. “Please.”
“Very well.”
It’s a little more than one week before everything goes down that Bruce gets somewhat of a warning from the universe.
The warning comes in the form of Elton Finch, an old friend who had worked with Thomas until the end of his career and with Bruce since the start of his.
They have endured many events together over the years. Something Elton kindly reminds of just before he says something has Bruce spiraling for the rest of the week.
“I saw a young boy in Gotham Square yesterday and it was like travelling back in time two decades. He was practically a carbon copy!” He said, looking at Bruce like this was supposed to mean something to him. When Bruce said nothing, the old man huffed. “I get why you decided not to tell anyone, with the media and all. Guess his own experiences with the press left a bad taste in your boy’s mouth, eh?”
Bruce said nothing, hoping the man would continue talking so he could figure out what he was talking about in the first place. Fortunately for him, Elton loves to talk.
“What I’m trying to say is that you could have told me,” Elton goes on with a small shrug, but Bruce can see genuine sadness in the man’s eyes. Told him what? “No matter how senile my sons say I am, I do know how to keep a secret about my friends’ private lives.”
“I know you do, Elton” Bruce assures with a hand on the shoulder. “But what are you talking about?”
Elton blinks. “The boy, about yay-high, looks exactly like his father” he says, slowly growing unsure. “Is he not the next generation Wayne?”
Bruce’s mind blanks for a moment. He refuses to panic, but he’s sure his complexion just paled a few shades.
Elton’s frown deepens at his response, or the lack thereof. “I was so sure...Like I said, it was like going back in time. It was like I was right back at one of your charity galas back when you first started hosting.”
“A carbon copy,” Bruce echoes. His palms grow clammy, cold sweat gathering at the back of his neck. “A carbon copy of who?”
“I- well, I could have been wrong-” the man stammers. “Perhaps my age if finally catching up to me…”
“Elton,” Bruce says once he finds his voice again, heart in his throat. “A carbon copy of who?”
Elton looks hesitant. Perhaps thinking that he accidentally uncovered some family secret Bruce was unaware of.
Elton shifts uncomfortably. “Your… your eldest. The troublemaker.”
“Dick?”
A call is made to the police department from a concerned neighbor.
Mrs. Fenwick, a retired pharmacist who has been ‘in her late 40s’ for the past three decades, quite enjoys her life living in the Burnley district. It’s a good place to live, especially after Firefly got caught by the Bat.
She has a modest apartment that she and her husband share with their beloved cats Duchess, Berlioz and Toulouse (She primly ignores when the kids on her street refer to her as a cat lady), and above all, she loves to gossip.
It’s why she chose to live in a part of Gotham that was known for it’s strong sense of community. Block parties, movie nights in the park, working together in the community gardens, children’s sport matches everyone’s invited to, bonfires, and more. All those events that happen delightfully regularly and Mrs. Fenwick has yet to go to one of them where no one had at least some interesting tale to tell.
Exhausted mothers vent to her about insufferable teachers, husbands, in-laws or other parents. Kids she’s asked to keep an eye on when a babysitter cancels last minute willing tell her anything they overheard when they weren’t supposed to if she bribes them with enough pizza slices or candy. Fellow customers who are too bored to not chat while waiting in line at the store.
Yes, Mrs. Fenwick’s sources of information are never-ending.
It’s how she knows that the handsome fella across the street’s name is William Fitzpatrick, and that he’s a retired government agent.
“I met one of his colleagues once,” Mrs. Sullivan told her during a neighborhood barbeque, “Apparently they called him ‘Wild Will’”
“I’m willing to test out if that nickname’s accurate,” Mrs. Buell, recently widowed and none too sad about it, volunteers as she eyes an oblivious William lewdly over the top of her sunglasses.
The other ladies rolled their eyes and teased Mrs. Buell good naturedly until they landed on a new topic to talk about. (If the unmarried Ms. Vickers thinks she’s doing a good job hiding her pregnant belly with those loose shirts she will have to take another look in the mirror.)
Mr. Moreno, a close friend of William, informed Mrs. Fenwick that the man has a daughter in her mid-twenties during a late night of very competitive Bingo. (She will win that Wellness coupon even if she has to tackle Mrs. Redfort to get it!)
“What was her name again? Mona? Millie? Mabel? Something with an M… Anyway, clever girl, got a good head on her shoulders. Will was sad when she moved out ofcourse but every bird has to fly from the nest at some point.” Mr. Moreno sighs when the called number is once again only one off from the one he needs. “I’m pretty sure she followed Will’s footsteps career-wise. Last I heard she was off to France. Or was it Switzerland? Somewhere in Europe.”
Mrs. Fenwick knows to take anything Mr. Moreno says with a grain of salt. The man can never remember the important details. It’s annoying, but it’s information nonetheless.
William’s wife died when their daughter was still in her tender years, and William has raised their daughter all on his own.
“It’s tragic, really” Ms. Towler sighs dreamily over tea as they watch the man work in his front yard. “He never truly moved on. You can see it in his eyes, the grief.”
“That’s just sand, dear.” Mrs. Fenwick tuts, watching the man wipe his sweaty brow.
Ms. Towler shakes her head in disagreement. “It’s always there. You just have to look deep into his eyes to see it.”
Mrs. Fenwick knows that Ms. Towler has never even gotten close to staring deeply into poor William’s eyes. The woman keeps blushing and rushing away whenever she’s in his vicinity. Oh well, she’s still young, only in her early thirties. She’ll get over the silver fox one day when she finds a guy who can appreciate the charm of her blotchy red cheeks and awkward stammering.
A ten year old Ravi tells her William is apparently Jewish while she’s babysitting. “He caught my classmate’s older brother trying to steal his silverware. Let him go with a warning and a call to his parents.” Ravi says with a mouthful of chocolate. Mrs. Fenwick wants to scold him for his bad manners but she wants to hear what he has to say more. “He had one of those candle thingies by his window.”
“It’s called a menorah, sweetheart” Mrs. Fenwick says. Ravi shrugs, and Mrs. Fenwick quietly laments the disinterest in knowledge of the youth these days.
Despite only having spoken to William a handful of times (he was kind, in a way that feels so genuine it startled her), Mrs. Fenwick was appropriately saddened to see the man being carried into an ambulance by paramedics only to hear the next day that he did not make it.
“At least he went quick and wasn’t in any pain,” said Mrs. Larson, the newly wedded wife of William’s doctor.
It’s not long after that Mrs. Fenwick finds out that William’s daughter’s name is Mary and apparently and he also has a young grandson named Peter (Details, Mr. Moreno, details!).
After the funeral Mrs. Fenwick goes over to bring a plate of her famous Yorkshire Pudding and to wish them condolences.
Mary, sad but kind (just like her father), gives her thanks. From the hallway Mrs. Fenwick can see young Peter sitting on the couch with a thick book on his lap. They both have a healthy tan so maybe Mr. Moreno was right that they had been in France. Mary and Peter both have William’s dark brown hair but where Mary’s hair is pin straight, Peter’s hair has more of a wave to it that curls at the end.
Mary follows Mrs. Fenwick’s gaze and smiles sorrowfully. “We’re going through some of dad’s photo albums. He’s…” her voice wavers “he was the only grandparent Peter got to meet so it has hit him pretty hard.”
“At that age emotions are much too big for such small bodies,” Mrs. Fenwick nods sympathetically.
Mary tells her they’re only staying for a week for Shiva during which they should have enough time to sort through all of William’s belongings.
After the short visit Mrs. Fenwick decides she likes William’s offspring.
The next few days she can see Mary and Peter move around the house through the windows. Other neighbors also come by to give their condolences and they, too, come to the conclusion that William has raised a lovely woman who is doing an equally lovely job raising her shy but polite son.
Which is why the next event shocks them all to the core.
It’s around 10 pm when Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick are peacefully going about their nightly routines. Mr. Fenwick is setting up the alarm for the next morning and Mrs. Fenwick is in the bathroom putting on (anti-wrinkle) face cream.
Then the screaming starts.
It startles Mr. Fenwick so much that he knocks their alarm off the nightstand. The sound of the glass shattering is barely able to be heard over the blood curdling screams coming from across the street.
“Call the cops, dear” Mr. Fenwick tells his wife as he slips his feet into his shoes and rushes out of the house.
Mrs. Fenwick does, for once, exactly what her husband tells her to do. Shaky hands hold the phone close to her ear after typing in the numbers. The screaming has stopped, but the silence is even louder as Mr. Fenwick and other concerned neighbors rush to the front door, and to the side of the house hoping to see through the kitchen windows what was going on. Mrs. Fenwick could swear she saw a small figure on the room but once she blinked the figure was gone.
Suddenly the house across the street seems much more gloomy. Shadows cast from the house under the moonlight stretch dark and far.
All the neighbors seem to share a collective sense of dread as the front door remains unopened and the lights stay off.
“-what’s your emergency?”
If you asked Benji, Colin and Daniel they were not the biggest troublemakers on the block. If you asked literally anyone else, they would heavily disagree.
Good thing no one asked.
(No one cares. Not about them. They’re Crime Alley trash with no future ahead of them-)
It’s not like they did anything bad perse. Just little things, nuisances that would ruin someone’s day like switching up the mail with someone on the other side of the block or stickers on cars that are practically impossible to peel off. If they were feeling particularly cruel they could cause some serious destruction but that rarely happens anymore.
They’re fourteen, live for the adrenaline mischief brings, angry at the world, and the world is their oyster.
So here they are, breaking their curfew like usual.
They walk away from the Mexican food truck Colin swore sold the best quesadilla’s in Crime Alley. Though it pains them to admit whenever Colin is right, Daniel and Benji have to concede this time. The quesadilla’s were worth every cent.
Daniel watches Benji light a cigarette with distaste. He never liked the things. The stench reminded him of his ma’s boyfriend who likes to play ‘Man of the House’ in a house that’s not even his. Right now the man’s probably thinking of creative ways to ground him for being out late. Oh well, Daniel will find a way around it like he always does.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Benji rolls his eyes. “Our lungs are already fucked up from just breathing in Gotham’s polluted air. Might as well enjoy the nicotine.”
Daniel scoffs but doesn’t argue.
Colin groans, taking a drag of the cigarette when Daniel offers. “I’m bored.”
Daniel looks at Benji. “Sleepover at yours?”
Benji shakes his head, “Can’t. Da still hasn’t forgiven me for the Marshmallow disaster.”
They all collectively wince at the memory.
“We’ll avoid walking down your street for a while,” Colin says with a shudder. Benji’s da has a shotgun and an extremely inaccurate prescription on his glasses. No one is safe.
Benji nods sagely, “That might be the smartest thing to have left your mouth in years.”
Daniel snorts as Colin smacks Benji upside the head. “Rude.”
“Excuse me,” a small voice speaks up.
Their heads snap towards the sound, then they look down. It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust and their brains to catch up with what they were seeing.
A kid. A very small, probably elementary school age, kid.
He is absolutely drenched in blood.
It’s dripping down the kid’s hands, there’s a streak on his cheek and the front of his Star Wars pajama’s is covered in it. The darkest spot is on his knees, like the boy has kneeled in a pool of it.
It’s hard to see in the dark but the boy doesn’t seem to be looking at them, rather through them.
The teens share uncertain looks. This is some horror movie type of shit.
“Are you okay, kid?” Colin eventually dares ask. It’s a stupid question, really. Clearly the kid is not okay. But he has to ask anyway. The kid reminds Colin of his little brother. (No kid that young should look this sad, this empty.)
“Do you-” the kid’s voice wavers, and oh god, he’s so young. The kid is trembling like a frightened chihuahua. His eyes are wide, teary and unseeing, staring ahead at nothing. It reminds Daniel eerily of that painting of Ivan the Terrible.
The kid takes a shuddering breath that rattles his lungs. Words seem to evade him. He blinks tearily at them, “Clinic?”
“Dr. Thompkins free clinic?” Daniel guesses and the kid nods.
Colin gestures down the street, “That way, take the third turn left and then you just walk straight ahead until you see the sign. She put up one of those blinky neon ones so you can’t miss it.”
The kid nods, and runs off before they can even think to offer to walk with him.
Benji looks at Colin with narrowed eyes. “This is your fault. You jinxed it. You said you were bored, and you jinxed it.”
Colin opens his mouth, probably to argue, when the revving of a familiar bike catches their attention.
“Well,” Colin said, feigning casualness. “Certainly not bored anymore. Come on.”
The three teens, ever loyal to the one adult in their lives who seems to give a damn, quickly rush off to flag down Red Hood.
Jim Gordon has long since passed the time that he’s surprised whenever Gotham’s very own ‘Dark Knight’ appears out of nowhere. If anything it’s become more of an annoyance.
Normally he makes a point of not even looking away from whatever case he’s working on, but this time he’s glad to be given a reason to turn away from the gruesome crime scene.
“Arkham is too cozy for the sonofabitch that did this.” The commissioner says.
Batman doesn’t disagree. The vigilante tales his time taking in the scene, scouring for any details the police might have missed whilst going over the facts in his head.
74 Willow Lane. Previously owned by William Fitzpatrick, age 61. William was a wartime operative for a predecessor to the CIA. Deceased on Tuesday at 21.01 pm. There was no foul play suspected but with recent events that might have to be checked.
William was a widower, leaving him a single father to Mary Fitzpatrick.
The facts around Mary are a lot more blurry.
Mary Fitzpatrick, age 25. Mary skipped 10th grade, graduated valedictorian, went to college in Bludhaven but dropped out during her second year.
Apparently she moved to Spain. Only there is no paper trail linking her to Spain. Or anywhere really. It’s like she simply stopped existing after dropping out. And when William passed away, no one under the name Mary Fitzpatrick entered the country with that passport.
Now Batman knows the probability of Mary Fitzpatrick having travelled under a fake name with a fake ID is high. It is only unclear as to why.
This was no ‘wrong-place-wrong-time’ situation. Whoever did this to Mary either knew her and wanted something from her, or wanted her to suffer.
He could figure that out later. The stuffed toy on the couch quickly reminds him of his priorities.
Because Mary, with all her years of mystery, is the single mother of a child. A son. Who is currently missing. And looking at the bloody crime scene in front of him that would have even some of his rogues sick to the stomach, he is not willing to bet that whoever did this would not hurt a kid.
“I’ve got everyone available out there looking,” Gordon says. “None of the neighbors have seen the kid leave but– and I hope to God that this is the reason – maybe he escaped before his mother was killed.”
Batman crosses the room and picks up the stuffed toy. It’s a well-loved stuffed white dog with red dots. “We’ll find him,” he says quietly to the commissioner. When they do, perhaps the toy could give the boy a small measure of comfort after losing the last of his family.
Gordon let out a weary breath. “I hope so.”
Leslie Thompkins has seen a lot of hurt people during her time as a doctor.
She’s seen enough to know that everyone has a different response to pain, and to loss. When people think about loss they quickly think about the five stages of grief; denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance.
What people don’t think about as quickly are the small stages in between. People don’t just go from denial to anger in a second. Well, some people do, but most people don’t.
It takes a few moments. For some longer than others. There’s this kind of numbness as the realization settles in. A shock. Like a pebble being thrown into a pool of still water and the water can’t decide whether to freeze over (denial), turn into a tsunami (anger) or to ride out the waves (acceptance).
The small stages in between are the moments where the brain is trying to catch up on the fact that a person one is no longer there to talk to, to hold, and to love.
She’s seen it many times in many different faces.
That doesn’t make it any easier.
Especially on a face so young.
The ringing of the bell by the door did very little to prepare Leslie for what walked into her clinic.
The young boy didn’t let her touch him, but he did allow her to make sure none of the blood – which he is absolutely covered in – wasn’t his. No physical wounds, which Leslie considers a small mercy. He lets her guide him to one of the more comfortable chairs her clinic has to offer, but doesn’t spare her a glance. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t move. He sits and stares unseeingly at the wall.
Leslie is just about to contact for help when an alert pops up on her phone. She startles, and quickly processes the words on her screen. It’s an Amber Alert for a young boy between 6 and 8 years old with brown hair and brown eyes. She clicks the link. They don’t have a picture of him but the description fits, and the house he disappeared from is not too far from her clinic.
She sits down on the chair next to the boy’s. “Peter?” she asks carefully. Brown eyes flicker with recognition but he remains silent. Leslie shifts so she’s fully facing him, placing her hand on the arm of the chair, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his hand but far enough not to touch. She carefully asks again, “Peter Fitzpatrick? That’s you, isn’t it?”
His bottom lip trembles, and he gives a shallow nod.
That’s enough for Leslie. “Okay,” she takes a deep breath, “there are people out there very worried about you, so I’m going to make a call and tell them you’re here, and that you’re okay.”
As okay as he can be. Leslie’s standards regarding that have become regrettably low over the years.
He gives another shallow nod but she notices that she instantly starts trembling.
She frowns and eases back into the seat. “I don’t know what happened, Peter, but I can promise you that the people I’m going to call for help are very trustworthy. They won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe.”
He doesn’t believe her, she can tell. She doubts that after whatever happened to him the concept of safe is even real to the kid anymore.
Just as Leslie stands up to make the call, the door to the clinic opens.
“Red Hood,” Leslie acknowledges, pushing the mountain of a man back out of the room before he can scare the poor kid. She closes the door and faces him again, “You know anything about this kid?”
He takes off the helmet, revealing features she’s more familiar with besides the eyes hidden behind a domino mask. A mask under a mask, she wants to scoff. Paranoid bats.
“A couple of kids told me they pointed the way here to a kid covered in blood,” he says. “Then B told us all to keep an eye out for a kid who might be chased by his mother’s killer, hence the city wide Alert.”
“Well, he’s unhurt for as far as I can tell,” Leslie informs him, watching his shoulders slump with relief. “He’s still in shock but he responded to his name at least.”
Red Hood crosses his arms. “The commissioner hoped the kid might have gotten away before his mom got killed, but I’m guessing that’s not the case?”
Leslie shakes her head regrettably, “From the state of his clothes, I highly doubt it. Unless he got away and then returned to the scene…”
“Either way he’s traumatized.” Red Hood concludes. Leslie hums.
Red Hood looks through the window in the door at the kid. The young boy has pulled his knees up to his chest, and is curling into himself like he wants to make himself even smaller.
“There’s one other thing,” Leslie says.
One thing that she didn’t let herself think about while she checked the boy over, or while she tried to ask questions. She’s a professional after all, and doesn’t let herself get distracted while taking care of a patient.
But sometimes doctors form bonds with patients. When familiar faces turn up hurt more times than the doctor would like. She has never met this boy before, but she does know his face.
Because Peter Fitzpatrick is a near exact image of Richard Grayson two decades ago.