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Gotham was a dead husk of a city. And maybe that was the cynicism in her, or the bias led by misfortune a dozen times over, but Bette wholeheartedly believed that.
Every breath she took in that city felt like it drained her. Every step was like she was walking further into a pair of parallel walls that were slowly closing in. She lived there not for the reason most did, because she had no reason to be loyal to that place. For her, it was a form of self-punishment.
It was a dead city, full of dying people, living in collapsing homes. Or in the ground, trying to drag everyone else down with them. Bette knew they were doing this, because she had never felt the call of the earth beneath her more. Somehow, even as she was unloading her boxes from the moving van into her new apartment those months ago, she knew it wanted to take her.
Fights, from then on, were hindered by cold hands scratching at her ankles, her hands, her brain. So it was Gotham’s fault that Bette was here, now. It was this city that killed her, just as it was this city who killed the woman who had meant everything to her.
A grey-skinned Bette was now staring blankly up at a grey sky, as the snow below her turned vibrant with blood. She felt strangely at peace with the situation, for the most part. This had been a long time coming, though she still didn’t know how she knew. If not like this, it would’ve come about some other way.
There were bright sides to the situation, to be completely honest. Of any place to die in the street, Gotham had to be one of the best. If she wasn’t found overnight by one of the city’s several do-gooders, or someone more sinister, it would be a civilian in the morning. And in any case they’d be a little more accustomed to that sight than out in L.A.
Bette felt with one twitching hand, but it was difficult to tell where the snow stopped being wet from blood, and started just being wet because it was snow. She tried to picture the size of the puddle anyway. She’d been bleeding a while, if she wasn’t mistaken. It wouldn’t be long.
Maybe it could be a little warmer, she supposed. Death wasn’t supposed to be warm, but it would be nice. It could be warm if she wasn’t out here, alone in the snow trying to prove her worth to a family, to a city, who weren’t looking. It could be warm if she wasn’t so alone.
Bette shut her eyes tightly. It really wasn’t fair that after all this, she had to die alone.
On her dresser, in her apartment, Bette kept a memorial of sorts. Three photographs in four frames, each joined by a carefully chosen candle that she couldn’t light, because her tenancy agreement didn’t allow open flames.
She would stare at them for a moment each night. Sometimes, one attracted more attention than the others, and she would fall asleep loathing herself for not taking care to grieve them equally. Because they were all equal in her life, and they always would be. At the end of the day, a dead friend would remain a dead friend.
The furthest left of the photographs depicted Don Hall. Once, he was Dove.
“Flamebird?”
Bette opened her eyes. It took a moment for her to feel the cold again, and even then, it didn’t feel as bad as it was before. Which was probably a bad sign. There was a figure looming over her, but completely failing to get her to a hospital. It was a ridiculously low bar that Gotham, apparently, couldn’t get over.
But the figure looked familiar. She squinted, making out blue and white against the darkness of the sky. “… D—Dawn…?”
“Close, I suppose. It’s me, Bette.” That was a man’s voice. And the strange cowl-like thing covering his head was unmistakably Dove’s costume, but that left one option Bette was particularly uncomfortable with, given the situation.
“No… you can’t… you’re dead.” Bette broke out into a coughing fit at the end of her sentence, as if to illustrate the point. A sliver of blood ran out from the corner of her mouth.
“Yes, I am. You’re not, though, so I think I’m here for a reason.” Don Hall — the real Don — shrugged, and stepped back. “What happened?”
“Fight. Bad fight.”
Don nodded. “And what are you going to do to save yourself?”
“Why do I have to? You’re here now. It’s fine.”
“Bette, I’m an avatar of peace. I’m not exactly on board with bearing witness to your death after being beaten to a bloody pulp.”
“Yeah, but… ‘s okay. You can stay with me.”
Bette turned her head slightly to the side, staring for a moment at the expression of discomfort on Don’s face. She wasn’t going to judge, or anything, but she was the one dying. What was wrong with having a final request? If all she wanted was to not be alone, surely that wasn’t that big of a deal.
Unless what Don wanted to say was that technically, she was still alone, because he was dead and possibly a ghost. Yes, that made more sense.
“Look,” Don sighed, eventually breaking the silence. “I know we weren’t the closest when I was alive. We didn’t know each other for long, I get that, but this doesn’t seem like you. Bat-Girl wouldn’t have just accepted death. So what happened?”
What happened was that Bette Kane left her friends behind to die in the saddest city in the world. Because she was selfish, and an ideal life wasn’t enough when there was a Batwoman across the country living hers.
“How bad is it?” Bette mumbled.
“It’s… bad. There’s a lot of blood. I can’t quite tell what happened.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’m gonna… do something. Like you wanted. Need to get to Bristol.”
“Alright, and how far is that?”
Bette thought for a moment. Her brain wasn’t exactly working on full power. “Further… than probably possible.”
She made her best attempt at rolling over anyway, ignoring the agony that wracked her body when she used her arms to pull herself off the ground. The snow beneath her really was extraordinarily red.
“Careful!” Don rushed to Bette’s side as she finally dragged herself up onto her knees, hands hovering but never touching. Bette glanced up at him as if to ask if he could, but judging by his expression, it was likely a no.
“Already being careful. Careful as I—” Bette sucked in a sharp breath as she dragged herself forward through the snow a little. “… can. What’s it like… being dead?”
“Why?”
Bette huffed. “Need a reason not to die.”
Don took a few steps forward so he was back in step with Bette, who was very slowly making herself to a fence to lean on. “Well… I’m not sure. I’m not sure how I got here, either, but now that I am… well, if I wasn’t so busy trying to keep you from killing yourself, I’d be thinking a lot more about Hank.”
Don and Hank had been attached at the hip, once. Always arguing, but they were as close as brothers could be. Bette had admired them together. She’d always wanted a sibling, too.
“He was my best friend,” Don continued. “And I had to leave him behind. I couldn’t even say goodbye.”
“Don’t have anyone to… say goodbye to.”
“The team?”
“Broke up.”
“What about your family?”
Bette froze, a move that took an extraordinary amount of effort but felt worth it all the same. “Not interested.”
“Bette, what I’m trying to say is that you have a choice, here. And you’re choosing to die. I respect that it’s your decision, but… a lot of people didn’t have this chance. And I don’t think you’re ready to die.”
“I’m— plenty ready to die. You don’t know anything. You’ve been dead for years.”
“So where are you going?”
“None of your business.” Bette retorted, and then promptly fell forwards onto an icy sidewalk.
Next to Don’s photo was Charley Parker. Golden Eagle, in all his glory.
Bette knew she was losing time. She didn’t know when she figured it out properly, but she did know that at one point, she was taking heavy steps down a street and Don was there guiding her, and the next, she was on a bridge, alone.
She didn’t know how she’d made it this far, and she didn’t care to remember. All she knew was that now, she was staring over a railing into Gotham’s murky waters, on a bridge that bore her own name. Half of it, anyway.
“Hey, where’re you off to?”
Bette didn’t need any second guessing to know that voice. In spite of herself, she smiled a little, two bloodied lips twisting up. She turned away from the water, and continued onward.
“Out of here,” she replied. In however long it had been since Don disappeared, it had apparently gotten a little more difficult to form words. She needed to pay more attention to how she moved her mouth, now, with how numb it felt.
“Oh, awesome. Guess I’m coming, too.” Charley rushed forward to stand next to Bette. “You’re looking gorgeous.”
“Flatterer.”
“Just telling you the truth. Even when you’re… looking like you got mauled, or something. We headed to a hospital?”
“No.” Bette offered no further explanation, because she couldn’t bear to admit to Charley what she was really doing. Besides, as much as he put on a show, he was smart, and he could figure it out for himself. “Can you stay with me for a while?”
“You know I always would, babe.”
He was right; she did know that. Charley would never leave, not when he had the choice. Only, at the end of the day, when he didn’t. Loyal to a fault, and he was the second to go.
Charley was Bette’s first roommate. When she moved out of her parents’ home, he moved out of the children’s home he’d been living in, and they got their first taste of domestic bliss. Bette always thought he was waiting to tell her something before he died.
“Do you remember that heatwave back in the apartment? We were sat on the couch, you were painting your nails, I had something on the TV.”
“Y’asked if you could ask a question. Then one of my high school friends showed up at the door. You said… you forgot what it was.”
“Yeah! Well, I didn’t. And dying kind of sucked, but not telling you sucked more. I think I love you. That’s what I was going to say.”
“Oh.” What else was there to be said?
Charley cleared his throat, kicking at the ground. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t die, because if you do, that would suck. For me. Real bummer.”
“‘s already too late.”
“Says who? You’ve already gotten all the way out here. I can see the blood trail.”
“Charley…” Bette sucked in a deep breath. “Please… just talk to me. Please.”
Charley said nothing for a long moment, and Bette could picture the conflict on his face. She didn’t look, anyway. Just in case it proved too much.
“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”
So he did. And Bette did listen to parts, but without ever stopping in her path, she was somehow ebbing in and out of consciousness. Her vision blurred and then cleared, black spots danced about and then disappeared again.
And between those instances, Bette was stuck on what Charley had said. He took that secret to the grave, and Bette would’ve never known. She didn’t know why she was suddenly able to know now, and she couldn’t even appreciate it, because she was marching along to her deathbed.
She didn’t know what she wanted to do. Whether she wanted to climb into Charley’s arms and give in, or squeeze her eyes shut and hope he would eventually disappear, like Don. In any case, she didn’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter, because suddenly the bridge was gone, and Charley was still around.
When Bette died — because it wasn’t an if, at the end of the day — she wouldn’t have any unfinished business. In fact, she’d pretty much wrapped all of that up in one go when she gave up on Titans L.A. and deleted all her friends’ numbers from her phone. As for love, she had more important things to consider. So why did what Charley said stick with her so much?
When she died, sure, people would mourn her. But it wasn’t like they would be wondering if she had anything left unsaid, which… hurt, actually. Because maybe she did have things to tell them, and maybe she would’ve done if they’d ever asked. Maybe Bette still wanted to make amends with Nightwing, or get to know Matt, or play another game with Christie.
It was all starting to sound a little like unfinished business, so Bette placed her focus on navigating the road again. Out here, landmarks of any kind were few and far between, save for a few notable trees and grandiose gates for the odd estate. Bristol was a lonely township.
“Fancy.” Charley commented.
“Richest… people in Gotham live round here.”
“Like your Aunt Kathy, I guess.”
Bette huffed. Charley was always careful to remember the things people told him. “‘s where I’m goin’. Home.”
“You could’ve just said that. I always wanted to go visit your aunt’s house.”
“Please come with me.”
“I will,” Charley mumbled, but it sounded like he’d stopped walking a few paces behind Bette. “I’m coming with you.”
When Bette turned her head, he was gone. She cried, and couldn’t feel the tears roll down her cheeks. She hadn’t felt much in a long while.
Finally, on the right hand side of the dresser, was Lilith Clay. Steady, beautiful Lilith. It was months before anyone told Bette what happened to her. And then she couldn’t stop seeing that pale neck breaking in her nightmares.
The Kane family’s Crest Hill estate used to be a manor of beauty. Nathan — that is, Kathy’s husband — took particular pride in its up-keeping. But since Kathy died, nobody had set foot in there at all. A house large enough to rival a small castle, and nobody wanted to claim it for fear of what it did to its prior owners. As if, should such a thing as the Curse of Kane exist, this house would be its cause.
Shaking, blue-purple fingers fumbled with a doorknob. She didn’t have a key. Why would she?
Stupid, it was so stupid to think that she could just get in. She wasn’t even standing anymore, and there was no fine motor skill involved in trying to get the door open. She was just collapsed against the front door, one hand blindly curling around the handle.
Bette had hit her head when she fell down onto the porch, and now she didn’t think she was capable of getting back up again. Bette shut her eyes, her hand dropping limply at her side. Close enough.
Moments passed, and then Bette heard footsteps approaching on the gravel, so she hurriedly cracked her eyes open again. She didn’t know when her mask had come off, but it had, so she found herself staring at Lilith with almost terrifyingly clear vision. Like she was seeing her for the first time altogether.
Lilith simply stood there, regarded Bette for a moment with a polite smile, and then nodded to the door. “I don’t think it’s locked, Bette. You’re just not turning the handle far enough.”
“… always locked…” Bette muttered between shallow breaths.
“Apparently, not right now. Try again.”
Bette really didn’t want to. She was tired. She’d come so far, and she was tired before she’d even started. They couldn’t just let her rest, none of them could. But this was what she wanted. Company.
So she reached up again, and used all her remaining strength to pull the door open. When it swung back, she swung with it, falling backwards onto the doormat with absolutely no grace. And now she was undoubtedly bleeding out onto Kathy’s floor.
Bette could feel Lilith’s eyes on her as she turned as much as she could onto her front, so that she was facing the dusty, tiled floor of the entrance hall. It seemed to stretch out for miles ahead of her, the old bright red runner marking a clear path to the other end that Bette would never reach.
One arm stretched forward, almost in slow motion. It pressed to the tiles, and pulled the rest of Bette’s body forward ever so slightly. So she moved it slightly further out. And did so again, and again, and again, until she was a few feet away from the door, and finally out of the cold. She still felt nothing, but it was better than the pain.
The sound of heels came after her, and suddenly Lilith was kneeling beside her on the tile. She looked, as per usual, as if she already had everything figured out. Bette envied that quality of hers.
“I wish I could make you more comfortable.” She said softly.
Bette creased her brows, a silent question hanging in the air between them. Lilith, unlike the others, wasn’t making any sort of attempt to talk her out of this.
“If you have it in your mind that you’re going to die today, then you will,” Lilith explained shortly. “And I think we both know there’s nothing I can do about that. You’ve always been stubborn. But I do have a question.”
Bette hoped the expression she made in response was enough of an agreement.
“Why not call someone? Why are you here alone?”
Bette’s hand twitched towards Lilith’s knee. I’m not alone, because you’re here with me.
“Someone real. Someone who can take you somewhere that you can rest.” Lilith glanced around. “This is a lovely home. It doesn’t deserve the rotting corpse smell, and you don’t deserve the silence. Do you know what I think?”
Probably.
“I think that you know you’re taking the cowardly way out. I think you’re ashamed of yourself, and that was the point of whatever took you here. Somehow, I think you feel like you deserve that. You don’t.”
What Bette deserved wasn’t anything to do with it. She deserved a home. She deserved love. She had all of that, and she gave it up. If anything, it stood to reason that she thought she deserved to live, and decided to be a contrarian and push herself in the opposite direction.
“You’re Flamebird, Bette, you find a way out. You will find a way out, because there’s no reason for you not to.”
Bette didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay in here, where Kathy could keep her safe. Her Kathy. Her home. She still had a few days before she had to go home to L.A., didn’t she?
“Where’s your phone?”
Bette’s eyes slowly drifted down to her belt. She kept her phone in one of the side pockets, for emergencies. But she really didn’t want to reach for it, even if she could. Maybe Lilith would go, and maybe nobody else would come.
But she never could say no to Lilith, and it wasn’t like anything could save her now. There was no harm in doing what she said if it was only to ease her conscience.
So Bette, after building up as much strength as she could muster, slipped a hand into her pocket. She failed to grip the phone inside, but managed to pull it out by just pressing her fingers down on the front of it and sliding. It clattered onto the floor, and Bette tilted her head to stare at it. There were no notifications, predictably.
“Okay.” Lilith nodded. “Now you call whoever you’re working with.”
Not Kate. Anyone but Kate.
Lilith sighed softly. “Okay. Not who you’re working with. But you know other people in Gotham, we both know that.”
Well, there was nobody Bette would want finding her when she was dead. But what made her different to any other person murdered on the streets of Gotham? Beggars couldn’t be choosers, so really, there was only one person she could call. And she hadn’t spoken to him in a long, long time.
But this was his city, and was in her emergency contacts, anyway. Why was that?
Bette slowly, painfully entered her pin. Opened the phone app. She couldn’t hesitate now, not with Lilith looking at her like that. She needed to prove that she was brave enough to do this. It was important for some reason she couldn’t remember.
She found his name. Hit the call button. And promptly rolled onto her back. Someone was talking, and it was probably him, but Bette couldn’t muster a reply. She stared at the ceiling, instead, the chandelier looming over her head like a guillotine. Kathy used to walk these same halls. Nathan, too.
“Bette?”
Bette made a pained sound in reply, and Lilith’s face hovered over Bette’s. She was so beautiful, even now, when she wasn’t really here, and obscured by the growing darkness of Bette’s vision. Everything a hero should be. Everything a person should be.
“I’m proud of you.”
That, Bette could live with. She hadn’t wanted to die alone, nor unloved. Her wishes had come true, so she closed her eyes.