DC: One for All Chapter 1 — David Beckett (Patreon)

The street buckled under David's feet making him stumble but kept going, kept running, because his mom was somewhere ahead. He was sure of it. He'd seen her turn down this street, or maybe it was his dad, he couldn't remember anymore, not with the smoke choking everything and every block looking like the last.

"MOM!!!" He called out desperately but then had to cover his head as a building to his left just came apart. The whole face of it sheered off and dropped into the road in one massive slab, and the shockwave slammed him sideways into a parked car hard enough to rattle his brain. He grabbed the door handle and hung on while the ground shook itself out. He felt like throwing up and passing out but he couldn't... not now. So he pushed off the car and kept running.

The monster was behind him somewhere. He could hear it even over the destruction, that wet shrieking noise every time a tentacle connected with something solid. He didn't look back. He'd made that mistake once already and once was plenty.

He turned a corner and stopped dead.

All Might stood in the center of the street his costume shredded across the chest and blood running from a gash above his eye, and when the tentacles came screaming down at him he caught them, the impact splitting the road clean down the middle. 

David stumbled back against a wall as chunks of asphalt bounced past him. 

The two of them were screaming at each other, All Might and the creature, but David couldn't make out the words over the roar of it all.

He tore his eyes away. His mom. He had to find his mom and dad, but before he could continue on he spotted someone trapped on the ground with his left leg buried under a slab of concrete that must have fallen off one of the storefronts. He was clawing at the pavement trying to drag himself free but the slab wasn't giving and when he looked up and saw David his hand shot out.

David ran to him without hesitation.

"Don't worry," he said, crouching down and jamming his fingers under the edge of the slab. Despite the fact he was only ten years old he did his best to try and lift the slab. Despite the fact he was terrified of the fight that was happening close by. He kept on lifting but he just couldn't make it budge. 

That's when everything went quiet.

The sound behind him, the fighting, the screaming, all of it cut out at once, the silence was so sudden that it made him turn around. He never saw what hit him. One second he was standing there and the next the world flipped and he was airborne, then he was bouncing off asphalt, his shoulder cracking against something solid, rolling and rolling until he landed on his back staring up at a sky stained orange and grey.

He didn't know how long he lay there for, he was sure he must've died. But eventually his vision cleared enough that he was able to get up. His knee buckled on the first attempt and he went down hard on his palms, but on the aecond try he locked his knee and forced it to hold and stayed upright.

There was a crater in the street ahead of him.

A crater wide enough to swallow both sides of the road and deep enough that the buildings flanking it were simply gone. David walked toward it, then broke into a jog that was more a limp and stopped at the edge.

All Might lay at the bottom.

He was on his back with one arm flung out, his chest barely rising and falling with massive amounts of blood spreading across what was left of his costume. His legs were bent at angles that made David's stomach lurch and even the bones were sticking out through his skin.

"All Might," David said in pure disbelief.

"ALL MIGHT!"

The slope into the crater was steep, it was full of loose rubble and crumbled asphalt with nothing solid to hold onto. David sat on the edge, took a breath, and pushed off. He made it maybe halfway down before the ground betrayed him. The gravel shifted and his feet went out from under him, a sharp rock raking across his shin as he rolled, his hands scrabbling at loose dirt that tore his palms open. He tumbled end over end until the slope spat him out at the bottom and he ended up face down in the dust.

After rubbing his sore head he got up again and crossed the rest of the distance towards All Might. Up close, All Might looked worse than David had let himself imagine. There was blood everywhere, pooling in the dust around him, his chest hitching with each shallow breath, one whole side of his face swollen and split open. David stood over him with his hands hovering not knowing where to even start in trying to help him.

He grabbed All Might's wrist with both hands, leaned back, and pulled with everything he had.

Nothing happened.

He slid his grip up to the bicep, planted his feet wider, threw his whole weight backward. All Might might as well have been welded to the ground. David's arms were trembling, his sneakers scraping and slipping, and yet All Might hadn't moved a single inch.

He let go, grabbed the arm again immediately, pulled again. "Come on," he begged, hauling on it. "Come on, come on, come on—"

All Might's eyes opened, his gaze drifting across the ruined sky before it found David's face and locked there.

"Come on," David said, his eyes burning, tears already spilling. "Come on! you have to get up now, we have to go, you have to get up, come on."

All Might tried and got about two inches off the ground before more blood surged out of him soaking through the front of his costume, streaming between his fingers when he pressed both hands to the wound. He eased himself back down with a shuddering breath, then another, then another, each one weaker than the last, eventually his hands dropped to his sides.

He looked up at David. "Young man," he said hoarsely. "What is your name?"

David dragged his wrist across his eyes. "D... David." A wet hiccup. "David Beckett."

All Might studied his face. "Young Beckett."

"Yeah."

"You need to leave," he said quietly. "There is still danger here, you need to get out of this area now while you still can."

"No." David snatched his arm again. "No, I'm not going, I'm not leaving you, you have to get up."

"Young Beckett—"

"I'm NOT leaving!" He said defiantly though it came out high pitched. "I'm not leaving you here so you have to get up, you HAVE to, please, please." His tears were falling freely now, running down his chin and dripping off. "I won't go without you, I'll help you, I'll carry you, I don't care, please just GET UP—"

All Might watched him cry, then he let out a big smile. "Young Beckett," he said. "Don't frown like that."

David's whole face crumpled. "What am I supposed to—"

"Smile," he said. "There is already far too much frowning in this world. It doesn't need yours on top of it."

David tried, but what came out was a mess, his mouth twitching upward while his eyes kept leaking and his chin kept trembling, it probably looked terrible, but All Might's own smile widened just a fraction.

"There," All Might said softly. "That's better."

"I need you to listen to me Young Beckett... I'm not going to be able to get up," he said quietly. "You are going to have to go on without me."

"No." David seized his hand in both of his. "No no no, I'll go find someone, I'll get help and come back for you—"

"Young Beckett." David stopped. "I need you to do something for me."

He stared down at All Might through blurry eyes. "What."

"This world needs heroes." The words came slower now, each breath between them heavier. "It needs people willing to plant themselves between the ones who cannot protect themselves and everything that would do them harm." His gaze held David's without flinching. "It needs a symbol of peace."

"I'm sorry," All Might said. "I'm so sorry, young man."

He lifted his free hand and reached up pressing his fingers to David's lips. David wasn't sure what was going on, but he could taste the metallic tang of blood on his lips, it made him feel sick but he also felt like he couldn't move.

All Might's hand dropped back to his chest.

"It's your turn now."

...

David's eyes flew opened to his forehead being pressed against the steering wheel of his car, there was drool on his chin and for about half a second he didn't know where he was or even how old he was. 

His heart was slamming against his ribs and his shirt was damp with sweat and his hands were gripping the wheel so tight the leather creaked under his fingers.

He sat back slowly, blinking, letting the car come into focus around him, taking a look at the the cracked dirty windshield, the takeout wrappers on the passenger seat, the highway stretching out ahead through the windshield. The neon sign of the motel across the road buzzing and flickering as half its letters dead.

That's right... he was on a stakeout.

He dragged both hands down his face and let out a long breath.

That dream. 

That goddamn dream. 

He hadn't had it in years, not since he was maybe sixteen, he'd thought he was past it, thought his brain had finally decided to leave that particular memory alone. 

Apparently not. 

Apparently his subconscious had just been saving it up, letting it ferment in the back of his skull until it was ripe enough to ruin a perfectly good Tuesday night.

He sat there for a moment staring at nothing in particular while the feelings crept in. The ones that so often accompanied the dream. That sick tight sensation in his chest like someone had reached in and crushed it... and the guilt... the ever present guilt that grew inside him like a cancer that he couldn't cut out no matter how hard he tried. 

He hated it. 

He hated that a dream he'd had a thousand times could still reach inside him and make him feel like a scared boy, and he hated even more that some traitorous part of him wanted to wallow in it like there was something noble about hurting.

"Fucking dreams..." he muttered to no one, and reached under the seat for his flask.

It was a dented silver thing he'd bought at a pawn shop three years ago and didn't clean much, the whiskey inside it was cheap and burned going down like he was drinking straight gasoline. He took a long pull, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then reached over and turned the radio on. 

"—marking the occasion with a candlelight vigil in Robinson Park this evening. For those of you who may not remember, or perhaps were too young to recall, it was exactly ten years ago tonight that the hero known as All Might gave his life defending Star City from the creature that authorities at the time were unable to identify or classify. The battle lasted for hours and resulted in the complete destruction of Star City's downtown. All Might sustained fatal injuries during the confrontation and was pronounced dead at the scene. He was, at the time of his death, considered the most powerful hero on record."

David's hand stopped halfway to the dial.

"While All Might may be gone," the woman continued, "his legacy has arguably never been more visible. In the decade since his passing, a new generation of heroes has risen to prominence, many of whom cite All Might as their direct inspiration. Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern, all of them have spoken publicly about the impact his sacrifice had on their decision to take up the mantle. In many ways, the age of heroes we now live in can be traced directly back to that night in Star City and the man who—"

David turned the radio off.

The car was quiet again.

He took another drink, longer this time, letting the whiskey sit in his mouth before swallowing. Then he leaned his head back against the seat and stared through the windshield at the motel across the road.

He stayed like that for a while, drinking slowly, watching the motel and the cars that went past every few minutes. 

At least the whiskey was doing its job and dulling the edges, and after a while the dream was just a dream again and All Might was just a name on the radio and David Beckett was just a man sitting in a shitty car outside a shitty motel waiting for another shitty person to show up so he could do his shitty job.

After a while someone approached the door to room fourteen at the motel.

David sat up.

He reached across to the passenger seat and dug under the takeout wrappers until he found the photograph. It was a shot taken at a distance, slightly out of focus. White male, mid thirties, receding hairline, weak chin, the kind of face you'd forget five minutes after seeing it. He held the photo up and looked through the windshield at the man who was now fumbling with a key, trying to unlock the door while holding a duffel bag under his arm.

Same guy.

David tucked the photo into his jacket pocket, took one last pull from the flask, and stepped out of the car.

The night air was cooler than he'd expected, or maybe he'd just been sitting in the car too long, either way he still turned up the collars of his overcoat. He crossed the highway at a casual walk, his hands in his jacket pockets, not drawing any attention to himself. 

The motel was an ugly building that sat on the edge of the highway leading out of Gotham. Two floors, exterior corridors, paint peeling off every surface, half the room numbers missing from their doors. A real monument to human ambition... if humans stopped having ambition around the same time they still smeared shit across the walls.

And that was saying something considering the kind of city Gotham was. In most cities a motel like this would be the worst thing on the block. In Gotham it was about average.

The parking lot was exactly what you'd expect. A woman in heels and not much else was leaning into the window of a pickup truck near the entrance negotiating with a guy about the cost of bending her legs over her head. 

Two guys who were very clearly dealing were posted up by the ice machine, one of them counting bills while the other kept lookout in a pretty piss poor eay. A third man was asleep or unconscious in a lawn chair outside room six with a forty ounce balanced on his stomach.

None of them looked at David as he walked over to room fourteen. They were all too busy with their own particular brand of bad decisions, which suited him fine.

Under normal circumstances he would have taken his time with this and scoped the motel out for a day or two, figured out the exits, maybe broken into the room ahead of time to get a feel for the layout. The boring unglamorous legwork that actually kept you alive in this line of work.

But that dream was still sitting on him and all he wanted right now was to get this done and go home and pour himself something better than the swill in his flask and not think about anything for a few hours.

So he walked up to room fourteen, positioned himself to the side of the door and knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again harder. "Maintenance," he called out in a bored voice. "Got a report about a leak."

He heard footsteps on the other side and the scrape of a chain being fumbled with. The lock turned and the door opened about four inches and the man's face appeared in the gap.

David kicked the door.

It swung inward and caught the man square in the face with a crack that was probably his nose, he staggered backward with his arms pinwheeling and his feet tangling together until he tripped over the edge of the bed frame and went down on his back. David stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and turned the lock.

The room was exactly as depressing as he'd expected. One bed, sheets that might have been white at some point in history, a television bolted to a dresser that was bolted to the wall, a bathroom door that didn't close all the way, and a smell that was a combination of mildew, cigarettes and a hundred year old man's sweaty ball sack.

"MY NOSE!" The man was rolling around on the floor with both hands clamped over his face and blood pouring between his fingers. "YOU BROKE MY FUCKING NOSE, YOU BROKE IT, OH GOD—"

"Stop being such a woman," David said as he grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt with both hands, hauled him up off the floor, and tossed him onto the bed where he bounced then lay there whimpering and bleeding onto the pillows. David pulled the photograph from his jacket and held it up next to the man's face comparing them. Even with the blood and the swelling and the tears it was clearly the same person.

"Marcus Webb," David said as he held it up. 

Marcus just lay there bleeding and crying.

David slapped him across the face not hard enough to do real damage but hard enough to get his attention. "Marcus Webb. That's you, right? Answer the question."

"YES," Marcus sobbed, flinching away from David's hand. "Yes, that's me, Jesus Christ, what do you want, who are you—"

"Good." David reached into his jacket and pulled out a second photograph. This one was different. A woman, young, maybe twenty four or twenty five, dark hair, nice smile, the kind of picture a family would put on a Christmas card. He held it up in front of Marcus's bloody face. "You know who this is?"

Marcus looked at the photo through watery eyes and whatever colour was left in his face drained out of it. "Oh God," he said. "Oh God, is this about Vanessa?"

"Vanessa Chen," David said. "Twenty four years old, reported missing eight days ago by her mother. Last known associate..." he pointed at Marcus, "...is her boyfriend, Marcus Webb..."

"No no no no no." Marcus was shaking his head so hard the blood from his nose was flicking onto the sheets. "No, I didn't do anything to her, I swear to God I didn't, you have to believe me—"

"Your girlfriend goes missing and you decide now's a great time to skip town? You see why someone might find that suspicious?" David said with an awkward shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm not, it's not because of her, I swear—"

"Relax." David held up both hands. "I'm not a cop, Marcus. I'm a private investigator working for her family, so just take a breath and talk to me normally." He paused watching the man's face cycle through about four different emotions before landing on something that looked like relief. "Did you kill her?"

"NO." He shouted as he sat up on the bed. "No, I would never, I love her, I love Vanessa, I would never hurt her, you have to understand that, I love her more than anything and—"

"Okay," David said flatly, because he could feel a monologue coming and he didn't have the patience for it tonight. "I believe you so stop crying. When was the last time you saw her?"

Marcus sniffed wetly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand which just smeared the blood around worse. "Three days ago," he said.

David's eyebrow went up. Three days ago. She'd been reported missing five days before that. "Where?"

'Clearly on the outs with her family then...' David made note of. 'Though considering she was dating a piece of shit like this that shouldn't have been surprising..."

"Outside the Tin Roof Club," Marcus said, his voice calming slightly now. "We had a fight... a bad one. She'd been... I don't know, she'd been acting weird for about before she disappeared and I confronted her about it and she got angry and we were outside the club screaming at each other and then I she slapped me and I left. I haven't seen her since, I've been calling and texting and going by her apartment and nothing, nothing, and I know how it looks but I swear I didn't—"

"The Tin Roof Club," David said, pulling a small notepad and a pen from his inside pocket and writing it down. 

'Of all the clubs it has to be that one...' David sighed.

"Yeah."

"Three days ago, what time?"

"Late. Maybe one, one thirty in the morning."

David wrote that down too. "Anything else? Anything at all? Was she hanging around new people, going to new places, anything that seemed off before she disappeared?"

Marcus thought about it, pressing a corner of the bedsheet against his nose to try and stop the bleeding. "She'd been going to this club for a while now. I asked her about it once and she told me to mind my own business which was... that wasn't like her, you know? Vanessa's not like that. And there was a number that kept calling her, I saw it on her phone a few times, it wasn't saved as a name it was just the number, and every time it rang she'd leave the room to answer it."

David wrote all of it down, the club, the unknown number, the changed behavior, and was about to ask another question when something stopped him.

Danger

He turned his head toward the door and frowned.

Then he looked back at Marcus. "One more question..."

"If you didn't skip town because of Vanessa, why are you running?"

Marcus's face went through another transformation, and he once again looked like he was about to shit his pants. "I owe money," he said quietly. "A lot of money. To the wrong people."

"How much."

"Sixty grand... there's a guy, a loan shark, operates out of the East End, and I borrowed from him about six months ago because I thought I could double it at the tables and I couldn't and now he's..." Marcus trailed off and swallowed hard. "He said if I didn't have it by Friday he was going to make an example out of me."

David sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's going to be one of those nights," he mumbled.

He grabbed Marcus by the front of his shirt, yanked him off the bed and tackled him to the floor on the far side just as the wall exploded.

BRRRRRRRRRRT

BRRRRRRRRT

Machine gun fire ripped through the motel room, the rounds punching through the exterior wall like it was wet cardboard and tearing through everything on the other side. The television burst apart, the headboard disintegrated into splinters, the mirror above the dresser shattered and rained down in pieces. Plaster dust filled the air so musch David could barely see his own hand in front of his face.

Meanwhile Marcus was screaming an annoying high-pitched shrieking that sounded like a cross between a child and a monkey. It was a real special kind of sound, because David sat there wondering if the machine guns could fire any louder to drown it out.

In the end he had to settle for ignoring it as he lay on his stomach behind the bed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his flask, unscrewed the cap with his teeth, tilted it back, and was in the process of draining the last of the whiskey when a round punched clean through the mattress above him and hit the flask dead center. The flask crumpled inward and the whiskey sprayed across his face and the flask spun out of his hand and clattered away under the dresser.

David stared at his empty hand.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered.

BRRRRRRRRRT 

BRRRRRT

BRRRRRRRRRRT

A second burst tore through what was left of the room, lower this time, chewing through the bed frame and sending chunks of mattress stuffing floating through the air like snow.

Then it stopped.

The silence that followed was almost worse because now he could fully hear Marcus' screaming. 

"YIAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Marcus kept screaming until David slammed his elbow into his ribs and cut him off abruptly. 

Marcus curled into a ball and was shaking so violently that David could feel it through the carpet, and the smell that hit David's nose confirmed that Marcus had lost control of pretty much everything below his waist.

"Marcus." David tapped him on the shoulder. "Marcus. Hey."

Nothing. 

Marcus was staring at the wall with his mouth open and his eyes so wide the whites were showing all the way around and he wasn't responding to anything.

"Marcus." David snapped his fingers in front of his face. "Marcus, look at me. Look at me right now."

Nothing.

David slapped him.

Marcus gasped and blinked and his eyes focused on David's face. "Oh God," he whispered. "Oh God oh God oh God—"

"Calm down."

"They found me, they found me, oh God—"

David slapped him again.

"I'M CALM," Marcus screamed at him, flinching away. "I'M CALM, STOP HITTING ME."

"Good," David said. "Because there are probably about five guys out there who are about to come through that door and fuck our shit up. So when I give the word, I need you to get up and run to the bathroom and go out through the window. You understand me?"

Marcus stared at him like he'd suggested they sprout wings and fly. "The bathroom window? Are you insane? They have GUNS—"

"Do you want to stay here?"

"No, No! I don't!"

"Then when I say go, you go. Don't stop, don't look back, don't think. You run to that bathroom and you go through that window. You got it?"

Marcus swallowed and nodded.

David held up his right hand and extended his index finger before pulling the finger back into a flicking position like he was about to thump someone on the forehead. 

The air around his fingertip changed. 

An arc of gold lightning jumped between his finger and his thumb, then another, then three more and the pressure seemed to increase too.

"Three," David said.

More lightning gathered, brighter now, the glow turning his hand gold.

"Two."

The crackling intensified, the air pressure in the room shifting again, David's hair lifting away from his head.

"One."

David rose above the bed with his finger aimed at the motel room door and flicked.

BOOM

The compressed shockwave that left his fingertip crossed the room in less than a blink of an eye. When it hit the door, the door ceased to exist. So did most of the wall on either side of it, and a good portion of the ceiling above it, all of it blowing outward in a blast that sent debris spraying across the parking lot and knocked over everyone standing within fifty feet of the building.

"GO GO GO!"

Marcus scrambled to his feet and ran for the bathroom, slipping on plaster dust and nearly going down twice before crashing through the bathroom door. David was right behind him, and when Marcus reached the window and fumbled with the latch David simply grabbed him by the belt and the back of his collar and threw him through it. The glass shattered outward making Marcus tumble into the dirt on the other side with a yelp.

David snickered at the sight before he put both hands on the window frame and vaulted through after him. His foot caught the frame and he pitched forward and hit the ground face first not that dissimilar from the way Marcus had. 

He was a little drunk. 

That was probably a factor.

He got up and grabbed Marcus by the arm, and started hauling him across the back lot toward the highway where his car was parked. Marcus was stumbling along beside him, still shaking, still smelling terrible, his head craned back over his shoulder at the motel room they'd just left. The entire front of room fourteen was gone, replaced by a hole that opened onto the parking lot, and through the dust and settling debris Marcus could see the scattered bodies of several men who were groaning and trying to get up amid the wreckage.

"What the fuck," Marcus breathed, staring at the destruction, then staring at David, then back at the destruction. "What the FUCK. Are you one of those freaks?"

"I can give you back to them if you'd prefer," David said without breaking stride.

Marcus wisely shut his mouth.

They reached the car and David opened the passenger door and shoved Marcus inside before walking around to the driver's side and dropping into his seat. The engine turned over on the second try and he pulled out onto the highway heading back toward Gotham, the motel shrinking in the rearview mirror until it was just a smear of neon.

They drove in silence for a while as the adrenaline wore out of their system. David kept his eyes on the road while Marcus sat in the passenger seat leaking blood and other fluids onto the upholstery and trying very hard not to cry again.

"There's a guy I know," David said eventually. "Operates out of Crime Alley, goes by the name Paulie Checks. He's a fixer, specializes in debt acquisition with the kind of people you apparently owe money to. His interest rates aren't good but he won't chop you up if you can't pay, worst comes to worse you'll have to work in one of his chop shops.'"

Marcus blinked at him. "You're... you're helping me? Why?"

"Because shut up," David said. "Here is his number, make sure to call him tomorrow. Tell him David Beckett sent you and he'll give you a fair rate."

Marcus was quiet for a moment, processing this through whatever remained of his higher brain functions. Then he looked over at David with an expression that was equal parts gratitude and bewilderment. "Thank you," he said quietly. "Really. Thank you." A pause. "Are you... are you really going to find Vanessa? Do you think she's okay?"

David didn't look at him. "If I can," he said.

They drove for another few minutes until David spotted a bus stop on the side of the road, so he pulled over, reached across Marcus, and opened the passenger door.

Marcus looked at the open door then at David. "What are you—"

"Get out."

"We're in the middle of nowhere!"

"I see a bus stop so take it downtown, find a motel that isn't on a highway, and call Paulie in the morning." David looked at him for the first time since they'd gotten in the car. "You also might want to find a change of pants."

Marcus opened his mouth to protest, decided against it based on the look on David's face, and climbed out of the car. He was barely standing upright before David leaned over, pulled the door shut, and hit the gas.

David continued on the highway as it fed into the expressway which fed into the city proper and he let his mind work while he headed to the club. 

Vanessa Chen, twenty four, missing eight days... or in actual fact missing three days. No gang ties, no criminal record, no reason for anyone to want her gone. The closest thing she had to a shady association was Marcus, and Marcus was about as dangerous as a wet paper bag. He was a gambling addict with a debt problem, not a killer, and the genuine panic in his eyes when David had shown him the photograph was the kind of thing you couldn't fake. But David had been doing this long enough to know that you checked anyway even the most unlikely suspects. 

What was interesting was the timeline. Vanessa had been reported missing eight days ago, but Marcus had seen her three days ago. That meant she was alive at least five days after she'd supposedly disappeared, which meant this wasn't a kidnapping in the traditional sense. She'd been somewhere willingly, or at least under her own power, and she'd surfaced long enough to have a screaming match with her boyfriend outside a club before vanishing again.

The Tin Roof Club.

That was his next stop as much as he didn't want to go there. Someone there saw something, or knew something and David was going to find out which.

But first.

He reached for his flask out of habit, his hand going to the inside of his jacket and finding nothing, then he remembered watching it spin away under the dresser with a bullet hole through it.

He held up his empty hand and stared at it.

"God damn it," he said.

He'd need to replace his damn flask.

...

He pulled off the expressway at Wescott and drove three blocks until he spotted the Tin Roof Club by the queue snaking out from its front entrance and halfway down the block. The building itself was a converted warehouse, the kind of place that looked like nothing from the outside but clearly had money pumping through it based on the crowd alone, lots of designer clothes and expensive hair. This was where rich trust fund kids came to get a taste of the dirty life, where they could get stories they tell their friends about how poor people use only one fork. 

David drove past the entrance and turned down the alley that ran alongside the building, pulling his car into a gap between two dumpsters. He killed the engine and sat there for a second looking at the alley around him, the broken glass, the puddles of piss and shit, the fire escape overhead with a man sleeping on the second floor landing.

Parking in a Gotham alley was not smart. 

He knew that. 

Everyone knew that. 

But as he looked at his car, at the cracked windshield and the dented fender and the passenger seat that now smelled like Marcus piss, he figured they'd honestly be doing him a favour if they stole it.

He got out and walked around to the front of the building. "Jesus fucking Christ..." he said with a long sigh. 

The line was long and it was moving slowly. Right now David couldn't think of anything worse than standing in line to get into this place so he headed straight to the entrance.

The bouncer at the front was enormous, one of those guys who looked like someone had stacked two normal people on top of each other and wrapped them in an overcoat. David walked past the entire line without hesitation, ignoring the annoyed looks and muttered complaints, and stopped in front of the bouncer. He reached into his wallet, pulled out a five dollar bill, and held it up between two fingers. 

The bouncer looked at the five, then he looked at David and then he simply started laughing. "Five dollars!!!"the bouncer said, wiping his eye with one massive finger. "Man said five dollars. Yo, did you hear this man? He just tried to slip me a five. My guy, what year do you think this is? I can't even buy a sandwich with that."

The line was cackling now, people nudging each other, a couple of them holding up their phones. 

He sighed and pulled the five back and replaced it with a twenty. "Give me a break," he said holding it up.

The bouncer looked at the twenty for considerably longer than he'd looked at the five. Then he plucked it from David's fingers and tucked it into his pocket with a sigh of his own. "Fine," the bouncer said, stepping aside and pulling the velvet rope back. "But only because we got an uneven ratio in there right now and you're a pretty attractive man. Go on."

"You'll make me blush," David said in a tone so flat it could have been used to level concrete and then he walked inside.

"Oh shit that's loud..." David complained as the Tin Roof Club hit him like a wall. The music was some kind of electronic track with a vocal sample chopped up and looped until it sounded less like singing and more like breathing. 

The next thing he noticed was the heat, it was the kinx that only came from several hundred bodies packed into a space that was technically rated for half that number. It also didn't help that most of the people here were bricked up and ready to fuck the first person that pushes against them.

David moved through the main floor looking around for the bar, seeing women in dresses that barely qualified as clothing rolling their hips against men whose hands were everywhere, sweat gleaming on their exposed skin, mouths close to ears, fingers hooked into belt loops. 

A girl in a silver top was dancing on a raised platform near the DJ booth with her eyes closed and her arms above her head and nothing but a thin chain connecting the two halves of what she was barely wearing. 

Two people were making out against a pillar near the bar, one of them with his hand inside the other's shirt. 

A woman was in the corner was sitting on a man's lap facing him, her skirt riding up her thighs so high you could see her ass cheeks, neither of them paying attention to anything else in the room.

David pushed through it, he hadn't made it ten feet before a hand grabbed his arm and a woman pressed herself against his side, dark hair and red lipstick and breath that smelled like tequila, her mouth close to his ear before saying something. 

He smiled at her and leaned in close enough to feel her cheek against his and said something that made her laugh before he gently detached her hand from his arm and kept moving. 

Another woman caught him two steps later, this one was blonde and shorter, her fingers hooking into the front of his shirt and pulling him toward her with a grin. He let her pull him close for a second, said something in her ear that involved the word "later" and a wink, then slipped free before she could get a better grip.

He reached the bar and leaned against it with both elbows, catching the bartender's attention with a raised hand.

"Whiskey neat," David said, loud enough to be heard over the bass. "Whatever your cheapest is."

The bartender, a young guy with a shaved head and a tattoo sleeve that ran from his wrist to his collar, poured a measure into a glass and slid it across the bar. David picked it up and looked at the contents.

"Are we in prohibition?" he asked, holding the glass up to the light like he was examining a specimen. "Because I've seen bigger portions in a cough syrup cap. Fill me up man."

The bartender poured a little more while David stared at him.

"Give me that," David said, reaching across the bar and taking the bottle out of the bartender's hand. He tipped it over his glass and filled it to the very top, the whiskey trembling at the rim, then set the bottle down and lifted the glass to his lips and drank the whole thing in one continuous swallow like it was water. He set the empty glass down, poured another from the bottle, and then handed the bottle back along with a ten dollar bill. "Keep the change," he said.

David sipped the second glass more slowly while he leaned against the bar and let his eyes move across the room. Then he turned back to the bartender with a casual expression. "Hey, I don't suppose you've seen a friend of mine in here recently? She would've come through a couple days ago, maybe Saturday night."

The bartender shrugged while he dried a glass. "Could've. We get a lot of people through here on a Saturday, easily five or six hundred, so I wouldn't want to guarantee anything."

David pulled out the photograph of Vanessa and held it up under the bar light. The bartender leaned forward and looked at it, his eyes narrowing and his mouth pulling to one side before he shook his head and leaned back. "Sorry man," he said. "Don't recognize her. Pretty girl though."

"Yeah," David said, putting the photograph away and finishing his drink. "Thanks anyway."

"Hey," the bartender said as David pushed off from the bar. "A girl that pretty though, she might've been up in VIP. There's a whole different bar up there, different staff and everything. They might've seen your girl."

David nodded and thanked him again before turning away and heading back into the crowd.

He spotted the entrance to the VIP section almost immediately. It was hard to miss, a wide staircase against the far wall with velvet ropes across the bottom and two bouncers standing in front of it who were even bigger than the one at the front door.

David looked at the bouncers from across the room and took a drink from the glass he'd brought with him.

No doubt they'd throw him out on his ass if he tried going up there. He didn't have VIP money, didn't have VIP clothes, and the ten he'd given the bartender had been the last interesting thing in his wallet.

He looked around the club, scanning past the dance floor and the DJ booth and the second bar along the far wall until his eyes found what he was looking for; a staff entrance, a plain black door with no signage tucked into the wall between the bathrooms and a fire exit, propped open by a rubber wedge. Through it he could see the light of what was clearly the kitchen with servers moving back and forth.

He set his glass down on the nearest table and worked his way through the crowd until he was standing near the staff entrance. He shrugged off his overcoat first, folding it over his arm and draping it over the back of an empty chair, then pulled off the vest and laid it on top. Without them he was down to a white dress shirt and black trousers, which was close enough to what the servers were wearing that it would pass under bad lighting. He rolled his sleeves up to the elbows, pushed his blond hair back behind his ears with both hands, and then leaned over to the end of the bar and snagged a metal serving tray that was sitting there empty.

He tucked it under his arm, straightened his posture, and walked through the staff entrance like he'd been doing it for years and nobody looked twice. 

He moved through the kitchen with the tray balanced on his fingertips and his chin slightly raised and the kitchen staff parted around him without comment. He found the service staircase at the back and took it up one flight to a landing with a door marked VIP SERVICE ONLY. He pushed through it and stepped out into the lounge.

"Fucking rich people..." David muttered as he saw the VIP lounge. 

The VIP section was a different world.

The lighting up here was golden instead of the aggressive red and purple of the main floor, and the music was softer, still audible but mixed down to a level where you could actually hold a conversation. The furniture was real leather, deep booths arranged in a horseshoe around a private bar that was stocked with bottles David couldn't have afforded if he'd saved for a year. 

The clientele matched, men in tailored suits and women in dresses that cost more than David's apartment, the kind of people who drank champagne like it was orange juice. 

David set the tray down on the first surface he passed and made his way to the VIP bar, which was smaller than the one downstairs but about ten times nicer, all dark wood and brass fixtures with a bartender to match, an older man in a waistcoat with silver at his temples. 

David leaned against the bar and pulled out the photograph again. "Evening," he said. "I'm looking for a friend of mine who I was told might've spent some time up here recently. Any chance you recognise this woman?"

The bartender took the photograph and held it under the light, his eyebrows went up and he nodded before David had even finished his sentence.

"Sure," the bartender said. "That's one of Victor's girls. She's been up here a few times in the last couple weeks, always at his table." He handed the photograph back and then tilted his head toward one of the booths in the far corner where a man was sitting surrounded by women. "That's Victor right over there."

He paused then and looked at David with an expression that carried a warning in it. "I'll tell you this though, friend. Victor is a piece of work. If I were you I'd probably steer clear, his Dad is some kind of big shot Senator."

"Appreciate the heads up," David said, pushing off the bar and heading toward the booth.

He was about halfway there when he passed a table that had a bottle sitting on it, three quarters full, the label caught his eye because it was a brand of whiskey he'd only ever seen in magazines, the kind of thing that aged for twenty years in oak barrels and cost more per glass than most people's electric bills. He picked it up without breaking stride, pulled the cork out with his teeth, and took a long drink.

He stopped walking.

"Ooooh," he said, holding the bottle out in front of him and looking at it with genuine admiration for the first time all evening. "That's good. That is really, really good." He took another drink, longer this time, letting it sit in his mouth before swallowing, savouring the difference between this and the bottom-shelf paint thinner he'd been pouring down his throat all night. It was like comparing a symphony to someone banging on a trash can.

He kept drinking as he walked, tipping the bottle back every few steps, and by the time he reached Victor's booth there was maybe two fingers left in the bottom. He set the bottle down on the edge of the nearest table and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Victor's booth was a large curved thing, deep enough to seat about eight people comfortably, and right now it was holding Victor in the center with a woman on each side of him and two more across the table, all of them laughing at something he'd just said. Two men stood on either side of the booth's entrance, big enough to be bouncers but dressed well enough that they could have passed for guests.

David took one step toward the booth and the bigger of the two men put a hand on his chest and pushed him backward hard enough that he had to catch himself.

"Private party," the man said.

One of the women in the booth, a redhead in a green dress who'd been watching the exchange, cupped her hands around her mouth and booed loudly. "Boooooooo! Let the handsome guy in!" she called out, and the woman next to her nodded vigorously.

Victor looked up from his drink and laughed, a big easy confident laugh that showed very white teeth. He was younger than David had expected, maybe late twenties, with dark curly hair and a jawline that belonged on a billboard and the kind of tan that came from actually going places where the sun was. "What, am I not man enough for you ladies?" he said, gesturing at himself with mock offense.

The girls giggled and the redhead made a so-so gesture with her hand which got Victor laughing harder.

"I appreciate the warm welcome," David said, cutting through the laughter before it could die naturally. "But I just need a minute of your time. You're Victor, right?"

Victor looked at him with an amused expression, his arm draped across the back of the booth behind the woman to his left. "That's me, babe," he said with a wink. Then he reached forward and picked up a glass from the table and held it out toward David. "Here, have a drink, you look like you need one. And if you want a bump there's plenty to go around." He nodded toward a small mirrored tray on the table that had several white lines arranged on it.

David chuckled and took the glass, drank from it, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph. "Never let it be known that I'll refuse a drink but I'll pass on the coke. Listen, I heard you used to party with this girl." He held the photo up so the table could see it. "Vanessa Chen."

Victor's face lit up with recognition and what looked like genuine affection, leaning forward to get a better look at the picture while the redhead next to him gasped and clapped her hands together.

"Vanessa!" Victor said. "Oh man, yeah, of course. She's a blast. Honestly one of the most fun people I've ever met, right girls?"

"She was SO fun," the redhead agreed. "She could drink any of us under the table and she was always the last one dancing. I miss her, she hasn't been around in a while."

"Yeah," David said. "That's actually why I'm here. Vanessa's missing. She's been missing for eight days and the last place she was seen was at this club."

The redhead's hand went to her mouth while the other women exchanged glances that were equal parts surprise and discomfort, and Victor's smile dropped a few degrees as he sat back in the booth.

"Missing," Victor repeated. "What do you mean missing?"

"I mean gone. Nobody's heard from her, nobody's seen her, her family hired me to find her. I'm a PI."

Victor looked at him for a long moment, then exhaled through his nose and rubbed his jaw. "Okay man, that's... look, that's really sad and I hope she's okay, I really do, but you are seriously killing the mood right now."

"I just have a few questions," David said. "Five minutes and then I'm out of your hair."

"Can we NOT do this right now?" one of the women across the table said, her face scrunching up like David had just taken a shit on the table. "We're trying to have a good time and this is really bumming me out."

"Yeah this is super depressing," the other one added, turning to Victor. "Babe, can we talk about literally anything else?"

Victor held up both hands in a gesture of surrender and then looked at David. "Look, I'm sorry about your girl, I really am, but you heard the ladies. Maybe come back another time when we're not, you know..." he gestured vaguely at the booth. "Hey boys, do me a favour and show our friend the Debbie Downer here the door."

The two bouncers moved in from either side and each grabbed one of David's arms and started walking him backward away from the booth. David tried to twist free, his feet dragging across the floor. "Come on man, just five minutes," he said, craning his neck to look back at Victor. "That's all I need, just give me five minutes to ask you some questions and I'll be gone, I promise—"

They didn't let him finish, the bigger one shifted his grip to the back of David's collar and the smaller one grabbed his belt and together they launched him sideways across the VIP lounge. He hit an empty table side-on, glasses and bottles crashing to the floor around him.

David lay there for a second amid the wreckage of someone's very expensive bottle service. Then he sat up, brushed broken glass off his shirt and sighed.

"The hard way then," he said.

In hindsight his next actions would likely not have happened had he not just necked a near full bottle of whisky. 

David reached over and picked up a glass bottle that had survived the fall intact and wrapped his fingers around the neck. He stood up, cocked his arm back toward the bigger bouncer who was already turning away and swung.

But before the bottle could make contact it slipped out of his hand and flew about a foot before it clipped the edge of the broken table and shattered on the floor.

David stared at his empty hand. 

Both bouncers turned around and stared at the broken glass on the floor and then stared at David. 

The bigger one tilted his head. "Were you just about to bottle me?" he asked.

"Ummm, no?" David said with a chuckle that was not convincing.

Danger

'Yeah no shit...'

The bigger bouncer closed the distance and grabbed David by the front of his shirt with both fists, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him back down onto the table behind him. David's back hit the surface and all the air went out of him in a grunt that sounded like it came from his balls.

The bouncer pulled his right hand back into a fist and threw it straight down at David's face. David turned his head and got his left hand up at the same time, catching the man's wrist and redirecting the punch so that his fist cracked into the table surface next to David's ear. 

"FUCK!!!" The bouncer howled and David used the moment to plant both feet against his chest and shove him backward, sending the big man stumbling into his partner.

David rolled off the table and landed on his feet, mostly, swaying a little as the whiskey reminded him it was still very much present and accounted for.

The second bouncer came at him then. He was faster than the big one and he threw a jab-cross combination that was pretty decent. David slipped the jab, caught the cross on his forearm, and countered with a short hook to the body that landed solid under the man's ribs and doubled him over just long enough for David to grab the back of his head and drive his face down into his rising knee.

The bouncer's head snapped back and blood sprayed from his nose, but before David could follow up the big one was on him again, wrapping both arms around him from behind in a bear hug that pinned David's arms to his sides and lifted his feet off the ground. David threw his head backward and felt the back of his skull connect with the big man's face and the arms loosened just enough for David to drop his weight, slip free, and spin around.

The big bouncer swung wildly but David ducked under it, grabbing a chair from the floor as he came up and cracking it across the man's side. The chair broke apart on impact, one leg spinning off across the room, the bouncer grunted and staggered sideways into the bar. 

David went after him but the second bouncer caught him from behind with a punch to the kidney that sent a bolt of white pain up his spine. He turned into the pain and threw an elbow that connected with the second bouncer's temple, snapping his head to the side, and then followed it with a straight right that caught him on the jaw.

The second bouncer went down to one knee.

Before he could finish him the big one came off the bar swinging. David caught the first punch on his guard but the second one got through, a looping right hand that caught him on the side of the head and sent the room tilting sideways, or at least more sideways than it already was.

David stumbled into a booth, grabbed a bottle off the table as he went, and swung it backhand into the big man's face. This one he managed to hold onto. It didn't break but it connected hard enough that the bouncer's head snapped to the side and he dropped to one knee, and David stepped forward and shoved the man's head down while bringing his knee up to meet it.

The big bouncer hit the floor.

The second one was back on his feet and coming in again, blood streaming from his nose, and David met him in the middle with a combination that started with a feint to the body and finished with an overhand right that dropped the man backward into a table. David grabbed his collar before he could recover, pulled him forward, and headbutted him in the face.

The bouncer collapsed.

David stood there, breathing hard, swaying slightly, blood from a cut above his eye trickling down into his eyebrow. Both bouncers were on the ground and the VIP lounge was dead silent except for the muffled bass coming up through the floor.

"Enough." A voice came from behind him, 

David turned around, still panting, and saw a woman descending the staircase from what must have been a private level above the VIP section, her heels clicking on each step.

She was tall and lean with dark hair cut to her jaw and green eyes that were currently looking at David with an expression he recognized immediately... becauee he'd seen it many many times before and what usually followed was bound to make him upset in one way or another. 

Selina Kyle.

"Oh..." David said. "Wonderful."

...

Selina's office was nice. 

It was always nice. 

Selina had a talent for surrounding herself with expensive things, a skill that was greatly aided by the fact that she rarely paid for any of them.

David sat in a leather chair that probably cost more than three months of his rent with an ice pack pressed against the side of his face and a glass of something brown and smooth in his other hand. His shirt was untucked, there was blood drying on his collar.

Selina was standing behind her desk with a notepad in front of her and a pen in her hand, reading from a list she'd apparently been compiling since they'd come upstairs.

"Two tables, one of which was a custom piece that I had imported from Milan. Eight glasses, crystal, part of a set I can no longer replace because the glassmaker died. Three bottles, including a 1998 Macallann. One chair, which I'm told was an antique, though honestly I never liked it so we'll call that one a wash. A portion of the bar countertop, which has a crack in it now that will need to be refinished."

She looked up from the notepad.

"So," she said. "How exactly do you plan to pay for all of that?"

"Keep my tab open," David said, sipping his drink.

"You don't have a tab."

"Best time to open one then."

Selina stared at him for a long moment and then sighed in a way that carried years of accumulated exasperation. She tossed the notepad onto her desk and crossed her arms, leaning back against the edge. "I'd steal from you but we both know you don't have anything valuable."

David chuckled into his glass.

Selina Kyle. 

Of all the clubs in all of Gotham, Vanessa Chen's trail had led him to one owned by the exact person he'd been trying to avoid for the better part of six months. Their history was long and complicated and exhausting in the way that only a history between a private investigator and a professional thief could be. 

David had been involved in no fewer than four investigations that had resulted in him tracking down and recovering items Selina had stolen, which she took with a surprising amount of grace considering how much effort she'd put into stealing them. 

She didn't hold grudges about it, at least not in the traditional sense, but it had made her aggressively competitive and that had somehow evolved into a whole relationship between the two. How complicated that relationship became was hard to say, but to put it simply there was not an ounce of Selina's body that David had not seen before. Though this definitely did not help when he'd come into her club and start smashing things up. 

At least she still lent him money now and then.

"So are you going to tell me why you're here," Selina said, "or are you just going to sit there drinking my liquor and bleeding on my upholstery?"

David reached into his pocket, pulled out the photograph of Vanessa Chen, and held it out. Selina took it, looked at it, and then looked back at David while he gave her the short version.

When he finished, Selina gave him a look that was so flat and so devoid of emotion that it almost circled back around to being expressive. "David," she said slowly. "I own this club. I have security cameras covering every inch of this building, inside and out. I could have just pulled the footage and shown you exactly what happened that night. You didn't need to come in here and beat up my clientele."

David shrugged but didn't say anything.

Selina's eyes narrowed as she looked at him, then at the photograph, then back at him, and her expression shifted as something clicked into place behind those green eyes. "You were avoiding me..." she said.

"Noooo," David said, stretching the word out in a way that made it obvious he was lying.

Selina's jaw tightened because she now knew with absolute certainty that it was true. "You are such an asshole," she said. "Seriously, David. No wonder you don't have any friends."

"It does make borrowing money a hassle," David admitted.

Selina looked at him for another second, her mouth pressed into a thin line, and then the corner of it twitched upward despite her best efforts and she shook her head before standing up from the desk and kicking his shin as she walked past him. "Come on," she said over her shoulder. "Let's go look at the cameras before I change my mind."

David set his ice pack down and pushed himself out of the chair with a groan that involved most of his body and followed her around to the other side of the desk. Selina dropped into her chair and woke up the monitor. David stood behind her and leaned over her shoulder to get a look at the screen while she navigated through the security system.

She glanced up at him. "You stink," she said.

"Give me a break," David said. "It's been a tough couple of days."

"Don't take it out on me," Selina said, planting her elbow into his ribs and shoving him back a few inches. He rolled his eyes and leaned in again, keeping slightly more distance this time.

"Saturday night," he said. "Sometime around one, one thirty in the morning. Start with the exterior cameras, the alley side of the building if you've got it."

Selina's fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up the camera grid and scrubbing through the timeline until she found Saturday at 1:00 AM. She switched to the exterior feed, a wide angle shot of the alley that ran along the side of the club, and let it play.

For a few minutes there was nothing but the usual traffic, people coming and going, a couple making out against the wall, a man throwing up near a dumpster. Then at 1:17 AM the club's side door banged open and two people came out, a woman and a man, they were already screaming at each other before the door closed behind them.

Vanessa Chen and Marcus Webb.

Even on the grainy camera footage David could tell it was bad. They were in each other's faces, both of them gesturing wildly, and though there was no audio the body language told the whole story. At 1:19 Vanessa hauled off and slapped Marcus across the face hard enough to turn his head.

Selina let out a short laugh. "Atta girl," she said.

Marcus grabbed the side of his face, said something that was probably not very nice and then turned and stormed off down the alley. Vanessa watched him go, her arms crossed, her shoulders rising and falling with what were probably angry breaths.

She stood there alone in the alley for about two minutes before she reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and leaned against the wall smoking and staring at nothing while the minutes ticked by on the camera timestamp.

At 1:24 the manhole cover in the alley moved.

David leaned closer to the screen.

It didn't pop open all at once. It shifted, grinding across the asphalt an inch at a time, and then it lifted from below and slid aside. Then a figure pulled itself out of the sewer and stood up in the alley. It was enormous, easily seven feet tall and wide, and it was wearing a long dark cloak that covered most of its body.

Vanessa didn't see it until it was right behind her.

The cigarette fell from her fingers and she opened her mouth, whether to scream or speak David couldn't tell, but then the figure grabbed her, one arm around her waist, the other clamped over her face, and dragged her backward toward the open manhole. She kicked and thrashed but the thing holding her didn't even seem to notice. It dropped into the sewer first, pulling her in after it, and the manhole cover slid back into place.

The whole thing took less than eight seconds.

The alley was empty.

"What the fuck," David said.

"What the fuck," Selina said, at exactly the same time.

They looked at each other.

David leaned back from the screen and rubbed the back of his neck while Selina rewound the footage and played it again, slower this time, both of them watching the figure emerge from the sewer.

"I didn't know you had a goblin problem under your club," David said with a dry chuckle.

"Oh fuck off," Selina said, not looking away from the screen. She rewound it again and paused on the clearest frame of the figure, the moment just before it grabbed Vanessa. Even frozen and pixelated and partially hidden by the cloak, the sheer size of the thing was not normal. "What is that thing?"

David looked at the paused image for a moment. "Well," he said, "I only know one guy who's that big and hangs around in the sewer all the time."

Selina turned in her chair and looked up at him. "Killer Croc," she said.

"Damn," David said quietly, almost to himself. "I really am seeing all my favourite people today."

Selina snorted but it didn't reach her eyes. She stared at it for another few seconds, then pushed her chair back and stood up. "Leave it for tonight," she said, turning to face David and looking him up and down with the critical eye of someone cataloguing damage. "You look like absolute hell, David. You clearly haven't slept, you're drunk, you're bleeding from at least three places I can see, and you smell like a distillery had a baby with a dumpster. Get some rest and deal with this in the morning."

"Time is important in kidnapping cases," David said. "Every hour she's down there—"

"It won't help her if you pass out in the sewer," Selina said flatly. "You go down there like this and Croc will eat you. Literally eat you. He does that."

"I'm not that drunk," David said.

Selina rolled her eyes so hard her whole head moved. "Come on," she said, walking past him and grabbing his arm as she went. "We're getting you a shower before you stink up my office any worse than you already have."

David sighed, he knew Selina well enough to recognize when she'd made up her mind about something. She would rather physically fight him than let him go stumbling into the Gotham sewer system at three in the morning in the state he was in, and while he was fairly confident he could take her in a fight, he was also fairly confident she would make it so unpleasant that it wouldn't be worth the victory.

And maybe she wasn't entirely wrong, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to stop for a few hours.

He followed her out of the office and up another flight of stairs to her apartment, which occupied the entire top floor of the building. It was, predictably, beautiful, all exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Gotham skyline filled with lots of stolen goods all made to make it look beautiful. 

She pointed him toward the bathroom and told him there were towels in the cabinet and that she'd find him something to wear. He thanked her and walked in and closed the door and stood in front of the sink for a moment with both hands on the counter.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

He really did look rough, the cut above his eye had crusted over but his eye was starting to swell underneath it, and his lip was split on the left side, and there was a bruise forming along his jaw that was going to be spectacular by morning. 

He took his clothes off and put them on a bathroom cabinet beside him then turned the tap on and scooped water onto his face, letting it run through the dried blood and sweat, and then rubbed his jaw and felt the scratch of stubble that was well past the point of being fashionable and deep into the territory of just looking unkempt. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles that had been there long enough they'd started to look permanent.

Twenty years old and he looked forty.

He was about to turn the shower in when the door opened. "I'm naked," David said. "So maybe knock."

Selina snorted from the doorway, leaning against the frame with a small stack of folded clothes in her arms. "It's nothing I haven't seen before," she said.

David looked at her. "I suppose you'll be getting naked then."

"You wish," she said, tossing the clothes onto the counter and pulling the door shut behind her. He heard her footsteps retreating down the hallway.

David turned on the shower and let the water run hot befoge he stepped under the spray and just stood there for a while, letting it beat down on his shoulders and the back of his neck, watching the water swirl brown and red around the drain as it washed away the blood and the dirt and the sweat. 

He washed his hair, scrubbed his face, and stood under the water until it started going cool, then shut it off and dried himself with a towel that was softer than anything he'd ever owned. The clothes Selina had left him were a plain black t-shirt and grey sweatpants, both of which he clearly remembered belonging to him and which he'd wondered where he'd put them the last six months. 

He walked out of the bathroom with steam trailing behind him, his wet hair dripping onto the collar of the shirt, and made his way to the guest room at the end of the hall.

He walked inside and sat down on the edge of the bed and felt the mattress give under him in a way that his own mattress had never given under anything because his own mattress was essentially a plank of wood with feathers. He told himself he'd just sit here for a minute, just rest his eyes, just let the pounding in his head settle before he figured out his next move.

He leaned back.

He was asleep before his head touched the pillow.

(AN: So this is my MC David Beckett the Ninth inheritor of One for All. I've decided to skip his origin but I'll introduce the important stuff if need be. I hope you guys find his character interesting and the story in general interesting.)