#33: Trial By Fire, Prologue (HoM / Cermak)

Gotham City screamed for her protector. At night, the cry was at its loudest-- ear shattering, soul crushing, a cry for help, for rescue, for retribution. With every soul that passed on in her streets, a part of Gotham died. She was dying now, of a deep and growing ache, a hole in her very core. She had always been ill, her sickness never far from the surface. But some days, there was hope, because he was there. Her child. Her guardian. He was gone now…or so she had thought. Her old protector was gone, but now there was a new face in the night. Someone had taken up the mantle. Taken up the fight. The sickness was always there in Gotham, but some nights, like this one, she had hope again.

Batman descended from her heights, and approached her lows.

Gotham: He is here. Rejoice.

Alfred was waiting for Dick, covered tray in hand, as he emerged from the Cave garage, and smiled courteously as he began to walk in step beside him. “Eventful night, Master Dick?”

“Freeze was an easy take down. Deceptively easy*.” Dick cracked his knuckles, and continued to trudge toward the computer. “He was one of the villains al Ghul resurrected for his mission against Bruce.” (‘Resurrected’ being a word that hung in the rafters of Dick’s mind for quite a while after he said it) “He helped connect some dots. Heard a name I didn’t want to hear again after reading about him Bruce’s archives.” He coughed. “So. Relatively quiet. I think they’re getting the picture now.” He cleared his throat and then frowned. “Though deep and spooky is doing a real number on my throat.”

“I have just the thing.” Alfred removed the lid of the tray, and instantly a sweet odour filled the cave air. “Tea with honey.”

“Fantastic!” Dick grinned. “I need to spar with Tim, but a cup of that will be great!” he laughed, and then continued. “Not going to be much good if I can’t bark orders, am I?”

“Apparently not,” mused Alfred. “I shall go inform young Master Tim that you have returned, though I would not be surprised if he hasn’t already begun warming up. Will you be needing anything else?”

Dick sipped the hot cup of tea. “A second wind?”

“I’ll see what I can drum up in the kitchen.”

*Check out the back up in this very issue!

“You’re signposting your punch, Tim—” Dick dodged left as the punch came from the right, slipped his foot behind the younger boy’s leg, and pushed him over with ease. “You need to remain neutral. You understand? If you signpost, you’re telling people where to kill you.”

Tim pulled himself up. “Right, right, sorry. I’ll get it next time.” He jumped up and down, and boxed the air for a moment, and Dick smiled, before placing his hands on the boy’s shoulders, and crouching down in front of him.

“There isn’t a next time in the field. On the streets, one mistake and you’re dead.”

Tim nodded. “I know. Come on, hit me.”

“Bit eager, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well…” Tim threw the first punch, and Dick dodged, moved to repeat the same leg sweep as before but Tim jumped up, and threw himself over Dick’s shoulders, before landing behind him, and delivering his own leg sweep. Dick was off the ground before Tim even landed, and as the young boy blinked, Dick picked him up by his waist and spun him around. “Aaaah!”

Dick laughed, and placed the boy back on the mat, before patting him on the back. “That was nice! Really good improvisation.”

“Yeah, but you still won…”

“Because,” Dick started, “I pulled the same move on Bruce when he took me in. He was on the mat in seconds.”

“Really?!” Tim gasped with surprise, “that doesn’t sound like Bruce at all.”

“No,” laughed Dick, “but then he tripped me up when I was too busy laughing and not paying attention. So…” He paused. “So…” He sighed. “So don’t get distracted. Let’s call it a night, alright? We’ll do this again tomorrow. Hit the showers.”

Tim nodded. “Ok. See you in the morning.”

Dick chuckled. “If I wake up.” Tim vanished up the stone staircase that lead up to the Manor above, and Dick stood in the training ground, remembering his youth. He remembered Bruce. Thinking about him… hurt. He turned off the lights in the cave, and headed upstairs. He wasn’t going to get much rest tonight, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

James Gordon, Commissioner of the GCPD, stood next on the roof of the Gotham Central building, smoking a cigarette. It’d been a long, hard few weeks. And it was about to get a whole lot harder. He breathed out, the smoke lingering in the air before dissipating into the bitter cold darkness of the night sky.

“They’ll kill you one day, Commissioner.”

“Them or the Joker, Batman.” Gordon dropped the stub to the floor, and ground it in his heel. “And I’d put my money on the Joker… But we go through this every time, so drop it.” He took a dossier from inside his coat, and handed it to the shadow. A black glove reached out of the darkness to accept it. “I need another pair of eyes on that.”

“What am I reading?”

“Crime scene report. There are photos too. Some sick… Some sick…” Gordon sighed, and rubbed his nose. “Some sick bastard is killing children. Doing God knows what…” He paused, and gathered himself. “Bullock is the primary on it. We need to catch this sonofabitch, Batman. We’re stuck right now, but any insight you might have would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Commissioner.”

“Wait, before you go--”

“Huh?”

“This freak makes me glad that my son isn’t in Gotham, Batman.” Gordon took another cigarette from his pocket and scraped alight a match. “You have no idea how that makes me feel inside.”

Dick nodded, though Gordon couldn’t see it. “I understand.” With that, he leapt off the side of the building, and vanished into the darkness. He’d return to the cave later, but right now, his patrol called to him.

“This is Gotham City.” Images of what could have been a war zone flickered up on the screen. Buildings were bombed-out husks. Smoke streaked the sky. Images of the wounded, the dead, flickered onto the screen at the click of a button. “The ‘Batman’; previously assumed to be one of the white-hats, joined forces with certifiable nut jobs Two-Face and Black Mask, and the result was chaos.”

There was a quiet, icy laugh from the back of the room, and then a lingering silence. The amused figure spoke up after everyone looked at her. “Sorry, I cannot believe we’re doing this. Carry on, ma’am, carry on…”

“Batman is a terrorist, responsible for millions in property damage, hundreds of wounded, and hundreds of dead. You’re going to Gotham, and you’re going to take him down.”

“The legendary Batman,” smiled a large, foreboding woman that sat beside a hulking monster, “On Apokolips, there are stories about him. His defiance when Darkseid came to Earth… It will be good to face him in battle.”

Amanda Waller smiled to herself. “Arrest, people. You’re to arrest him. And if he fights back a bit more than he needs to? Then and only then do you have presidential permission to kill him.”

Victor Fries had tasted freedom from his icy curse, for mere hours, before his body had started to deteriorate. It was a winter’s night (aren’t they all?), when a man with glowing green, transparent flesh had created a cloud of radiation that would rain (or snow, as it did) down upon Gotham City*. The snowflakes found their way into a special cell in Arkham, touched the flesh of the sub-zero man, and for the first time in years he had felt… Warmth? Cogs clicked and whirred in his head. He knew how to save his wife. How to reverse his own condition. He escaped within minutes. And then, as the night wore on, when he’d saved his wife from her cryonic sleep, and realised that the damage to his own system was irreversible, he fought his saviour/murderer, and they fell into the sea, and when Batman searched for their bodies… He found nothing. Mr Freeze was dead to the world.

But things change, do they not?

*Batman #8

Mr Freeze returned in the command of Ra’s al Ghul, his body no longer dying, his heart again frozen solid. How? Why?

His armour hummed. The hiss of freezing jets inside his suit kept him alive but the constant noise… Gotham had not changed in his absence. The only change that was wrecked upon the place was by his own hand, and those who had returned in the same manner. And the Joker. Never forget the Joker.

The depths of the Lazarus Pit were agonising. The radioactive deterioration of his body was brought to an end, but once again, he was cursed to remain in the cryo-suit of his own creation. He fought side-by-side with Ra’s for one reason, and one reason alone… So he might be reunited with his wife.

“Nora,” he whispered, his voice a raspy buzz inside the suit.

The house was hers. Hers and… Her boyfriend’s. Francis D’Anjou. If he could feel any emotion other than eternal, cold, loss, it would be anger. Jealously. He had fought for her, fought his unique ailment, fought the confounded Batman, just to see her alive once more. And he had lost it all. He stood in shadows. The ice truck he used to move around the city was silent behind him.

“Don’t do it, Fries.”

He span around, his ice-gun drawn high. “Batman.”

The Dark Knight crouched atop the truck, a silhouette in the street light. “Don’t do it.”

“She is my wife, Batman. Stolen from me by Dr Phosphorous. My one chance to be happy stolen away from me. And you know what else?” He took a step forward, his aim unwavering, “I had peace. I had peace, and that was snatched away from me as well.”

“I won’t argue with that, Fries.” He stared down at the villain, unblinking eyes piercing Fries helmet. “But this is not the way. You saved the city from Phosphorous all that time ago. And Ra’s exerted a control over you that I couldn’t begin to understand.” He dropped down from the ice truck roof. “I do not want to fight you. Come back with me to Arkham. There are good people there. We can help you, let your wife know that you’re back.”

“Batman…” His grip tightened on the trigger of the gun. Batman put up his hands, a sign of peace. “You wouldn’t understand. I was torn from my peace. Stripped of my freedom by Ra’s Al Ghul and his… Fire…” He pointed his gun at Batman. “You could never understand my—”

“V-Victor…?”

The two men span around, Nora Fries, wrapped in her coat, stepped down from her door and approached the two men in the darkness. Mr Freeze stared at her as she came toward him, his ice gun lowered to his side with an awkward jerk. Batman stepped back into the shadows. “Nora.”

Her mouth was hanging open, soft clouds of warm breath forming in front of her. Those big blue eyes were staring at him again, wide and barely believing, and glossing over with tears. “I thought you were dead… Drowned… And you…”

He shook his head slowly. “I was brought back unwillingly. I did not intend for it to be like this.”

She stepped even closer, a trembling hand reaching up to run over the glass shield that kept her fingers from his cheek. “You’re alive.”

Freeze shook his head. “This is not a life.”

“But… Don’t you see?” She was staring into his face, her lips curling into a hesitant smile, steaming breath speeding with the beating of her heart. “You’re back. And we… We can be together again… Can’t we?”

Freeze was taken aback by this comment. “What about D’Anjou?”

“No.” Nora shook her head violently, and the tears flew into the cold air. “No. I love you. I always have. Francis was a mistake and he’s out of my life now.” She gave herself a second to shake him out of her head, and gazed again at Victor, miraculously standing before her again. “And if you’re alive…”

“Alive…” Freeze brought up his freeze-gun, and Batman snatched a batarang from his utility belt. “Alive.” Freeze crushed it the ice projecting device, the alloy of the weapon tearing as his metal hands tore the device apart like paper. He turned back to Batman. “I would like to return to Arkham now, Batman. I would like that very much.”

Nora pressed herself against his armoured chest, and he was nearly taken aback. “I’ll visit, Victor. Every day.”

“I… Would like that very much.”

Nora stepped back, and Batman approached the couple. He placed a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Commissioner Gordon is on his way. But before he gets here… I need you to tell me all you know about Ra’s al Ghul… And those he brought back.”

Fries nodded. “You know of myself and Firefly, and those he used as his pawns in his battles. But there was another…”

“Who?” Batman stepped forward. This is what mattered to Dick. From what he’d been able to gather from Bruce’s archives and diary entries, Ra’s had sent a disciple to Gotham first. The Wrath. And with him, came another force, one that knew the secrets of Bruce Wayne intimately. Red X. Redwing. Jason Todd. The first sidekick of the Batman (a fact that bothered Dick, but he didn’t mention it to anyone) Todd had killed off c-level villains left and right, and somehow Ra’s had been able to swoop in and use whatever ‘magic’ he had up his sleeve to resurrect them (Dick wondered if Jason was in on it all along). Ra’s’ reach was wide, and Dick was at a distinct disadvantage not knowing who was out there. Firefly had returned. Freeze. There were others who had fallen in the line of their own duty. All crawling back to life.

“We did not hear his name, not his true one. Ra’s referred to him as… Death.” Dick clenched his fist so hard the knuckles cracked audibly. Fries didn’t mention it, though his heightened senses within the suit had to have picked it up. ‘Death’? That could be anyone. But if this were a direct assault on Bruce, if war had been declared and his enemies resurrected one by one by the ‘Lazarus Pit’, then it meant only person. The man who had murdered thousands of men and women because he simply could, back when Bruce had just donned the cape and cowl. The man who had slaughtered indiscriminately because it felt right. The man known as Doctor Death, the first villain Bruce had ever faced when he became the Batman.

“He’s on the streets?”

“That’s the thing, Batman, he’d been dead so long, and when he was brought back--” Started Fries, nervous for the first time that Dick had ever seen. “He’d changed. He never spoke, or I never heard him speak, but there was this air about him that--” He hesitated. “I was afraid. I do not like that emotion, Batman. I do not like it at all.”

“Where is he now, Fries?”

Victor nodded. “He vanished one night. We never saw him again. Either Ra’s got bored of him, or…”

“…Or my nights have just begun.”