HATE THE BAT

I think that the most troubling aspect of my life is that when the action starts, when I find my prey, hunt him, trap him, then bring him into the light-my light-is that the urge is almost overwhelming. I feel the pain return at that moment, the torturous youth that I endured, first with the vicious, senseless murders of my mother and father, then the self-inflicted torture that I put myself through, conditioning my body, my mind, my soul to fight a war that I knew was hopeless. The long hours of intense and exhaustive training, the equally long hours studying everything I could get my hands on, whether it be mathematics and physics or political science, literature and philosophy. If I had gone to a normal school, I would have never learned, I would have never been able to survive. My training and my education was my penance, my penance for surviving.

I hate myself for surviving.

It’s the most troubling aspect of my life, my hate for myself, for the destiny that whomever that deals out fate gave to me. Sometimes, when I am holding the shirt-collar of my prey over the side of a ledge, nothing but me stopping him from falling hundreds of feet onto the concrete below, the fabric tearing oh so slightly with every passing second, I look into those wide, scared eyes of a man who has had destiny deal him a fate equally as cruel as mine, and I hate myself for what I let myself become.

It’s that hate that prevents me from going over the edge, from taking a man’s life when others would do it without thinking. I will not let that urge come over me, because if I did, I knew my hate would be too strong to withstand.

Every single night, I fight a new battle in an unspeakable, hopeless war. The world around me is against me, every since that night in the alley, walking to our car when the war took it’s first victims. It isn’t a war against suffering. It isn’t a war against crime. It’s a war against myself.

My struggle to accept what I am, and who I am, both of which I despise so much, is the focus of my battle. Only by taking down the criminals that plague the city that anchors my soul can I find acceptance. Only by preventing the atrocities that have come upon me and all who have ever cared for me can I find the balance within my soul.

That fight has brought me here tonight, on the ledge of a medium-sized building, my right foot resting uncomfortably on the head of a marble griffin, the other on it’s paw. Like a sniper, or a marine walking his patrol, I have become one with my surroundings. The only thing that could possibly give me away is the cape that I wear, weighted at the end and stiff when I tell it to be. I’ve tucked it under me, however.

No one would see me, even if they were looking for me. I’m laying against this most impressive gargoyle, looking down into an alley, a nameless alley to anyone that walks by. For me, though, this alley is everything. Dubbed Crime Alley, for obvious reasons, this was where I was destroyed and then reborn in the fire. Tonight is that anniversary, the twenty-fifth anniversary to be exact.

I’m a thirty-three year old man who dresses like a bat who fights crime. Sometimes I tell that to myself to lighten my spirits. It’s not far from the truth. Hell, it is the truth, but it isn’t the whole truth. I don’t think that I remember the truth anymore. It just sounds too funny sometimes.

My life began down there, my true life. I hate my life.

The only one close to me enough to be considered an adoptive father asked me what my plans were for this evening. This anniversary was having an effect on him as well. He was their butler, but he was more than that. Sometimes, I think that I got the idea for all this from him, from the stories he would tell me when I was a child, crying to hard to fall asleep. He would tell me adventure stories, whisk me away to strange new lands, where the heroes would always win, they’d save the innocents and defeat the bad guys. Sometimes, things would turn out rough for the hero, but through determination, the hero would get through it, always seeing that good, no matter how tarnished, beaten or injured, would always find a way to shine through the darkest of clouds. I took those stories to heart, realizing that they were his attempts to tell me something very simple: things will get better if you really want them to.

I told him I had responsibilities, duties. He nodded and smiled. "I know they are proud of you," he told me as I descended to my true home. He didn’t follow tonight. I’m glad he didn’t, I don’t like crying in front of people.

Now, draped across a gargoyle fifteen stories high above the dark, grimy, gritty, dingy streets of my city, tears fall from my eyes, falling near to the exact spot of it. I couldn’t do my rounds, not tonight. The city would have to make it through on it’s own, with no Batman. I know if Jim knew the reason, he wouldn’t mind. When I told him yesterday that I would be unavailable today, he just nodded, never asking why or complaining that I wouldn’t be around. I bet he knows. I tried to tell him once.

In all these years, over ten of them dressed as a bat, there was one person, and only one that truly knew what I felt. I never told him that, never confided in him at all. I was usually very curt and rude to him. He was the best of us all, too. I can say that without reservation, too. Some consider that to be me, but they know, deep down, it’s someone else.

I never wanted to be the best at anything. I just wanted to stop the hate.

When the wind picked up-and it was only a subtle change, but I could feel it-I knew he had come. I didn’t turn around, though, I didn’t want to face him like this. This was my night, my night to be alone.

"Bruce," he said softly, like an angel.

There was always something about that voice of his, another item I would never tell him. It’s so damned commanding, even when he’s trying to be nice. Even for me, that voice is one I would follow with to the death.

But I didn’t answer.

He stayed there for an hour, while I shed my tears, the ones that needed to be shed. He didn’t leave me there, and for that, in a strange way, I am grateful.

I slowly rose from my perch and turned around. We were almost the same height, and in appearance the same build. We were both chiseled out of solid stone, that much was true. He was a bit different than that, though.

"Don’t you have something better to do tonight, like rescue a cat from a tree?" It’s another thing I hated, I could never answer true compassion with compassion. It had all been taken away from me.

"No, I didn’t, not tonight."

Thank you, I should have said. Instead, I wiped my red, bloodshot eyes.

"I wanted to see how you were."

I took a deep breath, and tried to compose myself. I didn’t have many friends. I had Alfred, Dick, Jason, Tim, and Barbara. They knew me, they all worked with me, they lived with me. They took my fight as their own, battling their own inner demons while I battled mine. I never looked at this man before me as a true friend, and now, looking at him, taking time from his life, his wife, to come and see how I was, I wondered why I never did. He was a friend, maybe more so than anyone else. Everyone else had something else going on, some other life that got in the way with mine. I knew that was the case, and I respected that. They were all individuals, humans. I couldn’t expect them to give the same way I could give. They had their souls, they wanted their souls. I wasn’t that sure about mine, though.

But this man, this super man, he gave without thinking about himself. Even when he was in love, he gave himself to others. He was there for everyone that needed him, for everyone that he cared about, and that cared about him. I guess that I had to count myself among those people.

"It’s been a hard day," I said quietly, the gruffness that usually accompanied my voice when I was the Bat nowhere to be seen. "It’s been a hard life."

"For both of us, Bruce." He said that a lot, but I never really took it to heart. He had everything, the powers, the looks, a family, friends. He was what everyone wanted to be like. Most of the people saw that side of him, and I’ve seen that side. I’ve seen the other side, too.

He fights a never ending battle to make the world a better place. He has fought through being different than everyone else, living with a secret that would change how everyone looks at him if they knew. If they only knew.

He has been in love. He’s been killed. He lost his mother and father, too.

And when I thought of that, I thought of my parents, and I started to cry. I saw his expression change to one of shock, but only for a moment. He composed himself as quick as I tried to. It took a bit longer for me.

"I’m not really good at this," he said, and I knew exactly what he meant.

"Neither am I, Clark." I used his human name before I would use his working title. I gave him his secret when I had to, though.

"Who would have thought, all those years ago, that you and I would be here, like this, on this roof, tonight," he said, with a dry smile on his face. "Who could have imagined it?"

He was right. We were ridiculous. We wore costumes. I wondered if my parents were alive and saw what I was doing, if they would in fact be proud. I didn’t set the precedence for the costumes, though. Mine was a uniform, a living extension of me. It was a tool. But we were ridiculous. I returned his dry smile with one of my own.

I turned to look over the edge, back down at the alley that my parents died in. He came up next to me, looking over the side with me. He saw it almost immediately. "Did you do that?"

"I couldn’t put a monument up there, or a memorial, not with the way the neighborhood was. I could stain the concrete, though." I did, too. From above, you could see it. In the concrete was a large bat, the same shape that I wore on my chest. I permanently painted it into the concrete.

We both sighed, not knowing where to go after that.

"Where’s Dick and Tim tonight?"

"I gave them the night off. I figured I wouldn’t be good company tonight." He laughed, and so did I. I didn’t mean to make a joke, but one came out anyway.

"And Alfred?"

"He understands."

"I’m sure he does."

More silence.

"You know, Bruce, I’ve never told you how to do things, even when I disagreed with your methods." I was going to interrupt, but he put up a hand and silenced me. "Even though my parents, my genetic parents were killed, I couldn’t possibly understand you, or why you were the way that you were. I’m not sure that I can even now.

"When I think about that, what happened to you all those years ago, and I think of others like you, victims of fate’s hammer, and see what they’ve become, I think about you and smile."

"What do you mean?"

"You let the grief consume you, but you used it to better yourself, to make you into the strongest human being on the planet, and I’m not talking about physical strength. I’ve never seen anyone like you, so pained, so injured, yet so strong and so right."

He crossed his arms. "I admire you, Bruce, because you lived through it. You didn’t let it kill you. I don’t know if I could have done the same."

I looked at him, and he nodded. I’m not sure how my face looked, but I’m sure it showed everything that I wanted to say.

"Sometimes I wonder what you would have been like if this didn’t happen to you. Probably not too much different, except for maybe the outfit. Still strong, though. But we would have all lost out. The others don’t know it, not directly. If they knew you, if they knew Bruce Wayne…"

He turned and was prepared to leave, but I stopped him, grabbing onto his cape. He turned to me, and I held out my hand. "Thank you, Clark."

"You’re the best of us all, Bruce. Always remember that." He released my hand, and took to the sky. I unraveled my jump-line and tossed it behind him. It caught his leg, and he looked back in surprise. Seeing me, he smiled and changed his course. He knew exactly where to take me.

The cave was darker tonight than I thought I had left it. Maybe it was his presence that lit the place up a bit. He had a strange affect on everything around him.

I walked into the cave, but he stayed behind. I heard noises ahead of me, near my equipment. Alfred must have been down there.

It was him, but not only him. Dick was there, Tim was there, and so was Barbara. The four of them greeted me with warm smiles. I turned back, but Clark had already left. He knew that he was welcome, and I would have told him that. He knew that it was more of a private function, too. He respected that. I respected him.

Looking at them, the four closest people to me, I began to hate myself again. I hated the fact that it had to be like this, our camaraderie always tainted by something. This time, it was me and my past, a past that I couldn’t come to terms with, I couldn’t forget, and not sure if I wanted to. I’d by a psychiatrist’s best and most frequent patient. He’d write books on me. Not yet, though, not yet.