Chapter Text
The cold, unforgiving waves of an oncoming storm thrashed left and right with monstrous force, hurling every poor piece of discarded trash against the rocks poking out above the waterline. Yet, beneath the frothing surface, the rocks were craggier, sharper, and all too much out for blood.
Sunken into the gray depths, hardly a meter beneath the surface, the current pulled a limp body about like a puppet on a string, its blue lips a stark contrast against the water's insistent lack of color. Meager rays of light rippled furiously as each forced movement disturbed the water a little more. Then, in one cruel movement, the waves slammed it against the rocks, sharp edges cutting into the marred skin of its back.
At once, his eyes flew open, burning as the saltwater entered, and before he ever had the time to think differently, he gasped for breath. As water immediately filled his lungs, an unfamiliar and overwhelming pain, he couldn't help but clutch at his throat with one hand, gagging and retching against the continuous stream while still entirely submerged. It was human nature, what could he do to stop it?
But his other hand made itself useful. While he clawed at his throat, urging his disobedient mouth to shut and block the water, his other hand shot out, gripping at the rock that had dragged him from unconsciousness like a lifeline. And it was a lifeline. It was one of the few things that gave him the leverage to push himself out of the water. Even when he held on so tight that his fingertips bled, as he pulled himself with all his might and broke through the surface, tossing himself onto the rock until he lay there like sodden rag doll, the rock being there was nothing short of mercy.
The air, even though he had escaped the grips of the water, would not come to his lungs just yet no matter how hard he tried. In fact, he couldn't inhale at all, neither water nor oxygen. Every muscle in his body twitched and tensed, fists forming tight balls as he expelled all the water from his lungs. The feeling was disgusting—the water rushing up through his throat, the inability take in anything at all—but it was worth it in the end. Even as the violent coughing that ensued made his throat feel like it was housing a swarm of bees, even when every desperate gasp for air felt like flames in his lungs, he couldn't help but think, Well, it's better than drowning... Probably.
Finally, with angry waves lapping at the back of his calves, feet weighed down by waterlogged shoes, the coughing stopped. His breathing was hard and heavy and fast, feeling like he'd just run a marathon through Death Valley, but he was alive. Not okay, but alive.
Eyes brimming with stinging tears, trying to flush out the salt and dirt of the murky water, he finally dared to look up, straining his eyes to look ahead of him. With the fog as thick as pea soup and the entire environment being so dull and monochrome, he could hardly tell sea from land and land from sky. At first, he thought he might be looking out into the ocean, no land for hundreds of miles, but a jagged skyline came into view after a moment, fuzzy and blotted by his watering eyes.
All he could make of it was a blend of sharp-edged, near brutalist skyscrapers and just as many old spires that seemed out of place among the modern shapes. All of it was made so close to imperceptible by the fog and mist hovering over the water and climbing up to the sky, like the heavens had fallen down and consumed the city. It didn't seem much like heaven, given the situation. It actually seemed more like he was about to be delivered there. Very brutally, and very painfully.
Suddenly, the oddest thought struck him. The thought that he wasn't meant to see this city, in all her mismatched patchworks of architecture. That he was meant to be alone out here, stranded in all directions. That he was meant to give in to the hungry sea, let it eat him alive like a desperation for a home that was unreachable, like a guilt for leaving it that way.
But the city across the water called for him, called out his name. A name that, upon further thought, he didn't even remember. He didn't even know if he ever had one at all, if he was ever given the right to have one. He didn't know if he ever had anybody to name him—a mother, a father, an aunt, anybody—and if he did, he could only hope that they weren't where he was now; lost at sea, on the brink of drowning, with no sense of direction but a silhouette as dull as a fading memory, something forced to be forgotten.
This city, she called out to him. She was a being beneath the fog, the settling dirt, and the dusk darkening the sky. Soon, she would light up her windows and she would guide him to the closest thing to home he'd ever get back. He was certain of that.
But as the waves rose higher and wind thundered against his body, slung across a rock that was hardly big enough to hold him, he feared her anger would pull him under.
No. No, it wouldn't. Because he was... He was nobody. Or, if anything, he was something too unremarkable to remember. He didn't know if he was strong or weak, determined or hopeless, loved or alone. All he knew was that, out here, he was just the same as everybody else; he was fighting to stay alive, and he'd be damned if he lost this battle. Literally. He'd die. Drown.
Not entirely unexpectedly, he felt a wave of dread creep up on him all too quickly for comfort, a predator finally striking against clueless prey. The water got higher, harsher. The hairs on the back of his neck jumped up, sending writhing adrenaline rushing through his icy veins. It made him want to claw his skin off, and it was eerily familiar, like a photo he didn't quite remember taking.
He couldn't do anything about it, though. Except maybe brace for the impact. So he took in a deep breath and held it, and he tightened his grip until he felt his nails crack under the pressure.
And he waited. In reluctant patience, he waited.
With a blast of force, the anticipation came to truth, but his preparations didn't do much at all. Even when the wave felt like a warm kiss against his freezing skin, goosebumps all over, the pressure wasn't anywhere near as sweet; it was honestly more reminiscent of a train collision. For some reason, he felt like a good judge of that kind of force.
His neck jerked forward, his temple slamming against a protruding corner of the rock, and he could feel the skin split, the blood seeping from the wound. He was sure that it must be turning the water a sick red all around it, but his eyes were screwed shut too tightly to tell. As his grip on the rock slipped and he was dragged away with the current again, all the air was knocked from his lungs.
His vision started to darken and his ears started to ring. He fought desperately to get his head above the water before he could pass out.
He didn't want to drown. He didn't want to die out here, just a nameless body lost at sea, lips too blue to tell who'd ever kissed them, if he had once been somebody to someone. Now, though, he was nobody even to all the nobodies of the world. Nobody even to himself, who he cannot name and cannot describe as anything but lost and disposed of.
If the world was willing to offer him a single mercy, he prayed that it would be the current taking him somewhere where he can be somebody again, if he ever was at all.
He wasn't foolish enough to waste that prayer on the odd wish that the current would take him home.
He knew there was no way home. Not anymore.
***
When he woke up, dragged into consciousness once again by a burning behind his eyelids, there was a scattering of orange and yellow and pink seeping through his shut eyes. He might've called it beautiful, if it weren't for the way that every part of his body ached, finally feeling the burning of the salt being ground into his wounds by the water. His fingers tried to grab at the ground, searching for something solid and stable to grasp for support, but instead he found his fist sinking into cold, ragged sand.
Gradually, his eyes found their way closer and closer to opening, dried salt and sand encrusted in every crease and fold of his skin. As he waited there, letting his eyes open at their own sluggish pace, he found that the longer he waited, everything hurt a little less with every passing second. His muscles still ached, his wounds still screamed, but it was less. So much less. Or it seemed that way, at least.
When his eyes really did open, when he pushed away the low sting to observe his surroundings, he saw something he wasn't prepared for. At first, most of what he saw was muddy sand and trash. Lots of trash. In fact, with him halfway to face-down in the sand, there was a discarded beer can lying right in front of his nose, and it was anybody's guess whether the stench coming from it was alcohol or something worse. He batted it away instinctively and jumped back, scrambling to sit up before he could put his face in anymore questionable garbage, and that was when he saw it.
Just breaking the horizon, made blurry by the fog, a beautiful orange sunrise reflected across the water like a confirmation, and his eyes practically glittered at the beauty of it. His breath left his lungs at the sight—not pulled, but willingly drawn to it—and for the first time in the last few hours, he wasn't mad at being unable to breathe. Something warm filled his chest. Something determined.
This was right. This was where he was meant to be. Not home, not yet, but exactly where he was meant to end up. He craned his neck as far behind him as he could and searched the skyline of the city behind him, at the odd hour where both crime and life slept. In these few, precious hours, the wonders of this city of harsh skyscrapers and looming buttresses dozes belong to only him, even if only for a while. Him and the other nobodies who answered her call.
So he stood. As simple as that, he stood, despite the cries of anger from his joints and the reluctance of both his muscles and mind. That was what you did when the waves beat you down and tried to drown you. You stood up even when it hurt, and you carried on. You made your own way. Except it's never really as simple as that.
He fell over.
He ended up back on his butt in the sand and muck just seconds after standing. The wooziness hit him like a truck, and he supposed that that was the consequences of nearly being drowned and then standing up much too quickly. That was probably his own fault.
So he stayed for a while longer. Not too long, just a few minutes. He sat and appreciated the beach he was sitting on (which was less of a beach and more like a five meter thick strand of sand, mud and garbage), and he watched the sunrise and listened to his creaking joints. The brightness burned his eyes—that burst of light right above the horizon line seemed brighter than any other point in the day—but he had to look, even just for a moment.
And then, when the sight was burned into his retinas and he felt a little more certain in his movements than he had earlier, he started to move, slowly and methodically. First, he braced his hands against the sand, a discarded bottle cap digging into the heel of his palm. Then he brought his feet as close to his body as possible, finally noticing that in the chaos of his near-death experience, the sole of one of his shoes had pulled away from the rest, leaving the fabric rather flabby. Prepared for the struggle this time, he pushed up off of his palms, bracing on his knees as soon as they left the floor.
And then he was up, just like that. He was dizzy, stumbling against the pull forwards in an attempt to rebalance, but up was up, and it seemed like he was staying there. Which was good enough, and what a damn relief that was. All it had taken was a well-thought out plan and ten minutes of his life. Which, although it might not seem like notable time to most, in this place where he didn't know how long he'd lived or how long he had left, ten minutes was ten minutes too many, especially to have been spent getting up. It wouldn't be long before he was certain he'd hear the first doors opening across the city behind him, the first cars setting out on the road to work or to breakfast or to someplace new, someplace that might be home.
It was ten minutes he couldn't get back, and every second spent mourning it was another second joining it. So he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and turned, keeping his chin as high as he could manage as he walked towards the city. Her call was so much quieter up close, but it was closer to his heart, closer to being a part of him. It was an electric buzz in his bones, so glorifying that it almost made him disregard the way that he limped rather than walked, or the way that his chin drooped to his chest without permission over and over again with the consistency of a leaky faucet.
The transition from beach to pavement was crude at best. Just a line of cracked concrete against the sand, almost disguised by the excess that had been kicked over the edge. Almost. It was concealed enough that he nearly tripped over it.
When he glanced around in front of him, it wasn't much of a sight. Out here, on the concrete full of spiderweb cracks and deep potholes, it was all just warehouses of corrugated metal, walled off by unmanicured steel fencing. It was practical and visually unappealing, but that didn't matter. It was sprawling, and it was framed by the lingering image of that skyline that was a cobbled-together, polka-dotted pattern of new and old, present and past.
And that was good enough for him, even when the shadows crawled weightily with the morning sun like monsters in the night, so he set off into the mess of warehouses, refusing to acknowledge anything that could be hiding within. Instead, he spun around at random and chose a single direction as the north of his compass and his goal to reach as far as he could.
This place was unknown, and the unknown dangers that could be lurking around every corner would use their unfamiliarity to their advantage. He wasn't oblivious to the whispers hidden behind these inconspicuous walls (though his mind was much too befuddled to decrypt the real meaning behind the murmurs), but they didn't matter. Right now, what mattered was making it into the main city. What mattered was finding his way around and making the unknown into the known. If he stuck around long enough, he might even be able to know his way around the city like the back of his hand. If this place became like home, now that he was here. Now that the current washed him up on the shore of this city. Now that she seemed to want him here, now that he was a part of her ecosystem. Maybe this nobody was somebody to someone; maybe he was somebody to her, to the city.
So he lost himself there, in his mind that was still rattled around by all that had happened. His mind would probably still be rattled for a long time, and he honestly wasn't certain he'd ever know how to put it all back into the places it had once been.
And losing himself for a while had its advantages. Namely the fact that he didn't know how long he'd been walking for, how long since his limp had grown a step closer to a fast but wary stride, and how long it had taken for the aches everywhere to subside a little more. Even his legs hurt less, despite the distance he might've gone.
Before he knew it, he found himself on the doorstep of the city, finding himself staring at row after row of apartment buildings. With the graffiti on the walls and the smashed up windows, he thought it safe to assume that he wasn't in one of the safest parts of the city, but that didn't bother him. He was in the first place where he might see actual people, prove to himself that this was real. That he was real. That he hadn't been taken under by the waves, tangled up and dead in the binding seaweed beneath the surface.
There wasn't a single piece of his soul left there in the water. Without a doubt, it was all here, watching the world wake up. In the taller windows, the ones without so much damage, blackout curtains were drawn back to let in the early morning sun. Doorbells chimed as shopkeepers opened their stores for the day. Children laughed as they walked to school in little groups and laughed harder when one of them tripped up on a crack and hit the ground.
When he didn't think about why the curtains of the lower apartments were never opened, how the shopkeepers all probably had rifles under the checkout counter, how the children walked in groups like they did so someone could scream when the others couldn't, it didn't seem so bad. It was just life. Not perfect, but life never was.
He was solemnly reminded of that when somebody, looking ragged in a threadbare blue polo shirt and bottom-of-the-barrel slacks that were both certainly part of a work uniform, threw an empty can at his head. At least he probably didn't have to wonder about what had been in this one considering somebody else had been willing to touch it.
He considered saying something, maybe telling the ragged-looking man to buzz off and ask him what the heck he did that for. But he didn't in the end. Mostly because he was too tired for conflict, but maybe a little because he wasn't the only one who was tired. God knew he was irritable when he hadn't gotten enough sleep, and he knew that he wasn't the only one in that boat. And then he realized that that was the first thing he really, properly knew about himself, who he was before he got here. The first thing he could say with full certainty that that was who he was.
Cranky when he didn’t get his beauty sleep. Off to a great start there.
And then his eyes trailed back up, looking over the patchwork skyline once again. Everything was lost behind so many other buildings that he couldn't tell where one ended and another began. If it any of it ever ended at all. Maybe he'd been wrong to think he could get anywhere like this. Maybe he'd been walking himself nowhere but further into his grave. For a second, he believed it. For a second, he felt that maybe this was hopeless. The city was too large and he was much too small and much too clueless to make any sort of progress.
And then something caught his eye, crumpled on the ground in a corner, trodden half to death. Given the grease and ketchup splattering it, he was pretty sure it had been used as a burger wrapper, but he was also pretty certain that it said M-A-P, and while he'd forgotten many things, reading wasn't one of them.
That was a freaking map, and suddenly it felt like all his problems were solved. He practically dove for it, picking it up off the ground and shaking off the crumbs. He held it out in front of him and, wiping off the watered-down ketchup sludge in the corner, he read the title.
Map of Gotham City.
"Gotham," he murmured, hardly even noticing it at first. "I'm in Gotham."
Before he could even take note of how horrible his voice sounded, how much it hurt him to speak, the feeling of knowing the name of this place brought up another resurgence of hope in him. Well, realistically, he couldn't actually prove that this place was Gotham, but, upon further inspection of the map, he was pretty damn certain.
So it turned out Gotham was an island-type-deal off the coast of New Jersey. It was a damn big island, and not very far off shore at all—close enough to be crossed by a solidly long bridge. He thought calling it an island was generous, and it was basically just separated by a fat river, but the map said what the map said. Gotham was, according to the dramatic map, an island. Multiple, it says. All separated by fat rivers.
Fat rivers do not make a place an island.
Where've the standards for island living gone, then? he wondered. Where's my non-alcoholic piña colada served in a cracked open coconut with a tiny umbrella?
At that, he smiled. It was the first time he'd really smiled since he got here. It was the first time that he'd smiled that he could remember at all. It was a big, toothy grin, and he almost couldn't stop himself from laughing, quiet enough just to share with himself. He managed though, in the end.
He was funny. He was cranky when he didn't sleep enough, and he was funny. Or at the very least liked to laugh at his own jokes.
Quite the mixed bag, really.
The map was also very helpful with the fact that it gave little pictures of helpful landmarks across the city. While it was the poor victim of burger grease, the pictures were clear enough, and he was drawn to one. Labeled "Gotham City Public Library," it was all limestone bricks and towering pillars, looming steps leading up to the entrance. But what it looked like didn't matter. This library could have books or, even better, computers. It could provide him with so much information that he didn't have, that he needed to survive.
Certainty stealing him for the long journey, he oriented the map to his general position and, with a pep in his step (one that actually hurt his ankles quite a lot), he started off towards the library, using the map as his guide.