2014.04.11 - Post-Mortem

It’s close to dawn. Too close to go out and continue the patrol. Soon, Gotham will belong to the daylight. That’s no place for Batman and his Family. So they retreat below ground, here in the Batcave where the sun doesn’t find them – the innermost sanctum.

Bruce sits at the Batcomputer, his back to it, stripped of his uniform save for the leggings about his lower half. A large, vicious bruise already bleeds across his right side and he views it with an impassive frown. A lucky shot from the city’s newest criminal – the Red Hood.

But it isn’t the first. His chest, arms and back are a roadmap of pain. Scars of all kinds crisscross his flesh – some fresh, most old. He leans forward, a hiss of pained breath escaping him, and pulls an ice pack from a mini refrigerator beneath the Computer’s desk. He holds it against the bruise, gesturing to Batgirl and the first aid station nearby.

“Oxycodone and celecoxib,” he orders, “The blue and the green bottles.”

Batgirl does as directed and heads for the first aid station even as Batman is directing her to, retrieving the instructed bottles and bringing them to him; she attempts to help clean up the most recent wound using her limited first aid skills if Batman lets her.

She thinks about the man they had just encountered and the violent way he had killed those criminals, unsure precisely what she should make of the Red Hood.

What she had discovered though, was a deep and underlying connection between Batman and the other man, it seemed to be a tragic link the two shared. She read it in their body language and shared fighting style.

She asks Batman as she removes her mask the words coming out slowly, "You fight before.." A pause, "..that man?" Referring to Red Hood.

Batman gently, or as gently as he can, gestures Batgirl away when she attempts to tend to the wound. He shakes his head.

“Fractured rib, fourth ... ” he pauses, looking upwards in thought – testing, “No, fifth. Nothing to be done for it. Just an ice pack and medication while it heals.”

He shakes his head, his body language a testament to his feelings on the matter. He’s angry but angry at himself. He should have moved sooner.

“Another thug calling himself the Red Hood,” he explains, “There’s been several over the years. Generally a gang who put one of their own in a mask to make him a target. Usually he has more men with him. This one was operating alone which makes me think he wasn’t part of the gang.”

He flips open the bottle of oxycodone with his thumb and upends the bottle into his mouth, several of the pills tumbling out. The amount of punishment he takes calls for a level of painkiller medication that would likely stun an elephant. He winces, putting the green bottle down and taking up the blue one. He flicks a couple of the capsules out into his hand and brings it to his mouth, swallowing them down without water.

“He seemed to think we’d met before. Why? What did you see?”

Batgirl takes the hint and moves away from the closest thing she had to a father figure, luckily she was intuitive enough not to take offense; she recognized that Bruce needed to tend to his wounds on his own.

She contemplates the question for a moment, trying to form her complex thoughts into words. Deep down, she's frustrated because in her mind, she knows everything she wishes to say but her vocal chords don't quite know all the words.

She opens her mouth to speak and then pauses before pointing at herself, "Fight like me." She points at Batman now, "Fight like you." She watches Batman with something akin to affection, saying as sadly as she can muster, "Red Hood. Sad. Angry. Alone." She knows all of those feelings far too well, "Betrayed..." The last word stings her the most to say, Bruce could probably tell she probably felt similar feelings to the ones she described based on her own expression.

“I noticed some similarities,” Batman admits, resting his elbows on his thighs and looking up at Batgirl, “And he armored all the strike points I’d usually target. Whoever he is, he’s done his homework. Do you think he was trained by David Cain? Lady Shiva? The League of Assassins?”

The possibilities are too numerable for Batman to be satisfied. He frowns, turning in the chair to face the Batcomputer and depositing the half-emptied pill bottles on the desk with a rattle. He looks up, addressing the mammoth screen that dominates this portion of the Cave.

“Run a search,” he commands the computer, “Cross reference Woosan, Sandra. Cross reference Cain, David. Cross reference ... “

He trails off, reaching a hand to rub his face as he thinks.

“Cross reference Turner, Benjamin. Cross reference all known League of Assassins agents.”

The computer beeps in affirmation, a long list of names immediately beginning to thin down to a handful on the screen as the algorithm searches through them.

Batgirl's eyes seem to open up just a little when Batman mentions David Cain, but she doesn't say anything. She knew the name, but she was unsure how she knew it, had he been one of the League members who had trained her?

She shakes her head to Batman and replies, "League training. Your training. Like me." She seems to be implying that Batman trained the young man before.

She cannot help but look over Batman's shoulder as he works on the computer, she felt a strange connection to David Cain and Sandra Woosan but she had no idea why.

Then she looks at Batman's wound and offers, "I face him for you."

Even as Batgirl speaks, the list on the screen seems to scrolls down to one name. Finding it, the screen expands to reveal a photo of Bruce himself and his name beneath it. He frowns, leaning back in the seat and wincing as the cracked rib pains him once again.

“I trained him? I don’t see how. Computer, account for all agents.”

Obediently, the screen displays all the extant agents of the Bat on the screen. Nightwing, Cardinal, Robin. All of them appear along with their most recent whereabouts. He shakes his head.

“It can’t be any of them. I’d know,” he points at Batgirl, “You’d know. No, it has to be something else. Someone who’s studied me. Studied us. Someone who knows how to mimic our movements.”

Even as Batman tries to examine the possibilities, Batgirl wishes she knew how to express herself a little better just so she could explain precisely what she had read from Red Hood when he fought Batman.

She struggles to read anything on the screen in front of her, finally just shaking her head at the computer; somehow though the two names she had read before had stood out clear as day in her mind amidst the twisted jumble of letters.

"Enemy? Friend?" She seems to be trying to offer her own suggestions, but she had seen that abandonment in Red Hood, that anger at a father she had felt. She just had no way to explain it to Bruce, nor did she really understand it herself. She was confused enough.

One way or the other, silently, she had already taken it upon herself to track down Red Hood if she could and save Batman further pain.

“Enemy,” Batman states plainly, “He’s killing people. He fought us. He’s obviously just beginning with whatever he has planned. We consider him an enemy.”

He can see the frustration in Batgirl and feels the pang of failure once again. Failure to understand what she’s trying to tell him. He presses the ice pack against his rib cage, hissing through his teeth as the pain slowly ebbs away under the influence of the painkillers.

“If you’re on this case,” he explains, “You need to be ready to back off. If he knows as much about us as he seems to then it could let him get closer than we’d like. If at any point you feel like he’s a threat you can’t handle alone then you break off. Understood?”

A nod is given in response to Batman's question if she understands, not that she really knew what the meaning of back-off was. She seemed to smile a little, perhaps at the fact Batman trusted her to handle things by herself; it filled her with a sense of pride.

She pointed to the wounds Batman had suffered, concern in her voice and clipped words, "You rest."

She points at herself and grins, showing pearly white teeth, "I train."