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Description
A.N- Ok guys, as you know it takes me quite a long time to up-date. Whilst planning and writing the next chapter in this story, I ended up doing this peice on the side. It was initially meant to be inter-changed between action from the main characters, but I thought it worked better alone. Therefore the main two characters Tetch and Crane aren't in this chapter, but I hope it'll be something to tide you over while the proper chapter is being written. I thought it would be better to load up as a buffer chapter, rather than deleting it.

Now beta'd many thanks to my beta, eeyop1428
__________________________________________________________________________________________

There is a time before the arrival of a storm when the air is heavy with electricity and the atmosphere is thick and tense. It's almost a relief when the clouds break and the rain falls down weightily, crashing on to the earth with such force that it destroys and breaks the vegetation and hardened pavements; the lightning flashes across a dark sky, temporarily lighting up the scenery with a flare of white, coursing energy that simultaneously thrills and terrifies; the deep booms of thunder call out shortly afterwards, frightening all living things and making them cower under the storm's brutal regime.

However, that quiet tense time before – when everyone hides in the safety of their homes; when the animals scuttle down dark holes and the deep cavernous Gotham drains; when bones ache and headaches pound and breathing is difficult, all with the natural anticipation of oncoming, unstoppable violence – this was what Gotham had been experiencing almost all day. The Rogues all went to their hideouts and waited; Batman donned his uniform early and stood like a giant gargoyle on one of Gotham's mightiest sky scrapers, Wayne Towers, whereas Two-Face brooded in the dark, his dark alter-ego becoming steadily stronger and more irate as the darkness slowly spread itself over the land.

In Officer Kelly's home his unfortunate family, still unaware of his fate, sat closely together in the living room, still and frightened. The electricity was still off. There was no artificial lighting and the windows were boarded. Despite being a city it was silent, for no one was outside and everyone was hiding. There was no television, no telephones and no radios, so no communication was available.

One of Kelly's children, precocious nine-year-old Leanne, crawled away from her dozing mother and tense siblings and went to the boarded up window. There was a crack of light shining through and when she put her eye to it she could see the pale, grey sky dimming. When the sun, hidden by the clouds, finally retreated and left their side of the world in darkness, she took in a deep breath like one about to dive into black, murky waters.

Suddenly, there was a car crash outside. It was obnoxiously loud, shrieking tyres preceding a loud crunching sound as the metal car twisted around some large, immovable object.

Louise was snapped out of her doze and the children around her winced. Her baby girl, Mary-Anne, who was still in her pushchair, whined anxiously.

"Leanne!" hissed Louise, "get back here!"

Leanne shuffled back towards her mother and older brothers sheepishly. "I was waiting for papa," she responded in a complaining tone. "It's gone dark outside but he isn't back yet."

Louise felt her heart jolt but didn't allow it to affect her face. "Well just stay here with me," she continued to whisper. "Night time is dangerous when this many Rogues are out. We'll all sleep here together tonight. I'll go get blankets, all of you must stay here and do not talk!"

Louise and Kelly lived in a relatively small town house. However, Kelly, being an officer, earned enough of a wage to support his family and to have them live in a house as opposed to an apartment like most of their friends. Louise worked part time at the local supermarket, her money bringing in the little extra they needed to occasionally take the kids away on short weekend breaks or to buy extra things, such as toys or books for school. Their house was little but it had two levels, an upstairs and a downstairs. They didn't have a basement but they did have a very small attic that held their junk and a family of squirrels. Louise, in short, should not have been so afraid to step out of her living room to go upstairs to grab a few blankets, but she felt terrified. A lump settled in her throat at the thought of leaving her children alone in the living room on the ground level, and her heart raced as she stepped out and looked up at the dark stairs leading to the upstairs bathroom and bedrooms. She wondered if she should just forget the whole thing and let them sleep downstairs as they were, but she couldn't ask her children to sleep on the floor with nothing above or below them just because she was too scared. She had hoped Kelly would be back by now with news of how most, if not all, of the villains had been rounded up, but he wasn't here and there had been no news on the Rogues, so she had to assume they were still out there.

She glanced back at her children. Bill was holding the baby with Josie beside him, Josie gently stroking the baby's hair, and John was sitting with Leanne on his lap, the pair looking through a picture book but neither of them speaking. Good, she just needed them to stay quiet. God knows if someone like the Joker was outside... no! She wouldn't allow herself to think of those things! Instead she cautiously climbed up the stairs, watched by her anxious children.

She climbed up each step slower than usual, her eyes fixed on the landing above and her hand gripping the stair rail a little too tightly. Every movement was specific and careful. There was a creak on the fifth stair that gave her pause for a moment. Her head cocked ever so slowly to the side as she unconsciously listened out for her children. All was silent for a few heart beats, before she could hear the slight sound of paper in a book being turned and her children's careful breathing. She knew that the fifth stair creaked, they all did, though normally they never really noticed; but in the tense silence, the slight creak now sounded like a loud, audacious threat. She continued on until she finally reached the top, the journey seemingly like a long and arduous trek up a steep mountain side. But it was not over yet.

The dark of night had not completely taken over yet. Instead it was the strange deep blue of late evening that cast its mysterious hue about the house, shadowing objects to make them appear larger and more threatening than what they really were. It was lucky that it was her own home, or Louise may have lost her confidence and ran back downstairs sooner. Instead she rolled her shoulders, telling herself that she was an adult and to stop being stupid, and opened the door to the first bedroom. It was her's and Kelly's. It was a humble room and a little untidy. Clothes were strewn across the floor from the mayhem of this morning when both realised they had woken up late for work, and there was a plate of cookies left on the top of their little chest of drawers against the bed from when they had guiltily scoffed the last of the yummy food the night before. She smiled softly, a small voice in the back of her head barely whispering that she might never see her fiancé again, before she pulled the quilt off her bed.

Outside a dog began to bark incessantly. Louise glanced at the boarded up window but decided to not let it spook her; she knew that particular dog – it belonged to a neighbours – and the dog was well known for being very noisy and barking at practically anything that moved. She was a bit concerned that her neighbours hadn't brought the dog indoors with them, but maybe the dog was too noisy and therefore a risk to keep in the house. It sounded brutal, but it was better to let the dog stay outside and, worst case scenario, get killed, than have it in the house barking and yapping and attracting attention so that someone broke in and the entire family was slaughtered. Gotham was a brutal city not because it wanted to be, but because it had to be.

Then there was a creak on the stair. Her eyes widened and her heart leapt into her throat. She turned around stiffly before seeing the small scared face of her seven-year-old daughter Josie. It did not comfort her, but rather her fear for what she would see had now transferred into a fear for her family – why was her child upstairs when she had expressly told them to stay where they were; why had her brothers allowed her to go?

Josie's pale hair was wet slightly with sweat and her blue eyes were as wide as her mother's; they stared at each other for a moment that existed in time like a still frame, each female looking so like the other that the family resemblance was undeniable and somewhat heartbreaking. Then in a sudden movement the spell was broken and Louise rushed forward, the quilt still in her hands. "What is it?" she barely whispered. "Why are you up here?"

Josie shook her head, as if too frightened to speak before mouthing, "We think someone's waiting outside."

There was a faint rumble outside, almost like the sound of thunder, but no rain or lightning seemed to accompany it. Louise hadn't registered it anyway, instead thinking:

Her daddy, Kelly?

A neighbour?

A stranger left in the dark?

A Rogue?

These words ran through her head faster than she could process them before she gave a single nod and began to slide downstairs with her child, leaving the quilt on the top of the landing. They were too afraid to walk and so they crept down in a strange motion, almost like sliding down on their rears but without actually sitting on the stairs and causing a loud bump each time they descended down a step. They both had the sense to skip the fifth step altogether.

In the living room, Leanne was holding Mary-Anne and both John and Bill stood with grim faces, each holding a knife. They looked like child soldiers, older before their time, weary and with a fear etched deep into their bones. It broke her heart to see them looking like that but she knew that she needed them to be tough and to be able to fight if they were going to survive growing up in a city like Gotham. They all shared a tight look as she sent Josie to stand with her siblings. She then took the knife off Bill and walked to the window. Peeking through the same crack Leanne had looked through earlier, Louise at first could only see the darkness of the night sky until something went across the crack quickly. She stepped back, her heart beating. She slunk out of the living room and looked at her front door. Whatever had moved outside the house had walked in the direction of the front door. The front door had a window next to it (boarded up of course) and a peep-hole at its centre.

She gulped and headed towards the peep-hole, tiptoeing slightly to see through it. There was another distant rumble of thunder, but this time it was closer. The air was heavier than before and the heat was almost unbearable.

Behind Louise, her two boys and Josie slid out of the living room, sinking into the darkness, and went up behind her with an unnatural stealth. They were backing their mom up – no way was she standing alone to face some entity separated from her by a mere piece of wood. John still had his own knife but Bill now had a rolling pin; he was aware that a rolling pin as a weapon would be comical in most of the cartoons he watched, but he had decided that here, in reality, it could do some damage if he needed it to. Josie didn't have anything, and her brothers had not wanted her to come with them. But Josie was seven years old and determined not to be afraid of anything, feeling that, as the youngest (short of Mary-Anne), she had to prove herself. Still, she flanked further behind her two brothers.

In the living room, Leanne stood holding the baby tightly to her chest, aware that she would be the last thing standing in the way of their most precious family member should someone evil be waiting outside. She was breathing noisily through her mouth; she couldn't help it, it was as if all the clear oxygen had been sucked away from the room. It was too hot, too stifling and too difficult to breathe through her nose. When she heard the next sound of oncoming thunder, she gulped with difficulty and began to hate the feeling of her t-shirt sticking to her back from sweat.

Louise put her eye to the peep-hole, her face so close to the door that she could feel her breath radiating back off its wood on to her face. At first she couldn't make out anything, but then an eye suddenly appeared, large and distorted, making her leap back.

"Excuse me," called a whiny voice outside, "excuse me, but I need help." The door was knocked by what must have been a heavy fist. "Please, it's my doggy, he's broken. Can I come in? I need help."

There was a high-pitched, pained yelping sound, the kind a dog made when injured, and Louise suddenly realised that her neighbours' dog had stopped yapping some time ago.

"Please," whined the voice, "please let us in, the dog is dying."

There was more pained yelping, this time it extended for a little longer. Louise closed her eyes, feeling torn. The dog was outside being tormented, but if she let in this man, surely he would kill her and her children. She couldn't risk it, yet the sound of the innocent animal suffering was torturous.

"He's killing it," she heard Bill mutter desperately, his teeth clenched together.

She turned and glared at him, noticing her children for the first time. She put a shaking finger to her lips and shook her head. He closed his mouth but still looked defiant.

"I don't know what I have to do to make you believe me," said the muffled voice from outside, "but trust me, I'm just some fat guy stuck out here with a broken dog I need to fix. Please, don't be afraid. I don't wanna hurt nobody."

"Maybe we can take the dog but hit him round the head, knocking him out," she heard Josie whisper behind her.

"No," John had replied, "we can't, now get back in the living room, Josie!"

"We can't let it die!"

Louise faced them again and saw that they were looking at one another and looking disobedient. Even though John was backing up his mother, she could see that his heart wasn't in it, that he wanted to save the dog as much as Josie and Bill. Her chest was so tightly constricted from the growing pressure of the situation that she was now in absolute physical pain. It was hard to think when she could feel her children's aggression; the man wouldn't shut up and the dog kept making those terrible, pained sounds.

'If I let that dog die out there,' she thought, 'they'll never forgive me. But should I rather that than risking their lives? Maybe they'll understand when they're older... or maybe they'll always see me as a monster but will at least be alive to do so.'

They dog let out a low howl this time, clearly in pained death throes. Gritting her teeth and cursing herself, Louise unlocked the door and flung it open.

A round-bodied fat man in a long raincoat stood with the local dog (she recognised that it was her neighbours', but she didn't recognise the man at all) bleeding heavily in his arms. The man was huge but had a dopey sort of face. She held out her knife threateningly, making him step back, little black hamster-like eyes shining but betraying no emotion.

"Gimme the dog," she growled, "then get the fuck away from my home!"

He put the panting dog down on her stoop and stepped away, his hands up. Her two boys came round and cautiously pulled the dog inside, it yelping with pain as they did. A trail of blood was left on the ground. She wanted to ask the man what he had been doing to it, but she no longer cared; they had saved the dog and he had backed off.

"Can I at least come inside?" he asked. "It's scary and dark out here. And I think a storm is coming. It's been bad weather all day." He smiled at her.

She stared back, momentarily stumped; the situation was bordering on bizarre. Louise then shook her head and began to close the door.

"Wait, wait!" the man called and for a moment a flash of guilt shot through her system like lightning and she wondered if she had saved a dog, but was leaving a man outside to his doom. However, she could trust the dog not to hurt her family; the strange man on the other hand, she could not. She continued to shut the door as all these thoughts flew through her mind, but the man ran like a quarter back and slammed into the door, pushing it open and throwing her back onto the floor.

She looked up at him in shock. Lightning flashed behind him before torrential rain began to pour down. She could see now that the raincoat he wore was far too tight and that underneath it he was wearing the hideous orange jumpsuits she knew Arkham inmates wore. Louise wanted to scream but she couldn't – instead she scrambled backwards as he sauntered into her home. Her two boys rushed out of the kitchen, each brandishing their weapons. They had taken the dog into the kitchen and were working out how to fix the poor creature up so it would survive until the morning – when they would be able to hopefully leave their home and find a vet – when they had heard the door banging open and realised, with terror-stricken hearts, that they had left their mother alone with a strange, heavy-set man. Josie was left with the dog as the two boys ran back out to defend their mother.

"No!" Louise screamed, running towards them to try and stop them before they got themselves killed. "No, boys, no!"

The fat man screamed as John cut into his side with the knife. The poor boy couldn't pull the knife back out however and the fat man lifted him up and flung him at his mother, making them both fall further into the dark hallway. (It was at this moment that Leanne with the baby ran past them and up the stairs, but in the darkness and chaos, no one noticed.) Bill came in from the other side and had beaten the rolling pin onto the man's arm, hoping to temporarily stop him using it. However, the pin instead broke in half and the man roared out, "Broken, broken, you're all broken! He was right, he was right!" The man began to weep as he shouted his bizarre revelation, grabbing Bill and throwing him so roughly onto the stairs that something in the child snapped. Bill screamed in agony, his body contorted in a way that revealed that his back had been badly injured.

Meanwhile, Leanne had run upstairs into the bedroom she and Josie shared. She slammed the door shut and pushed her chest of drawers in front of it, praying silently for her family to survive. Then she settled Mary-Anne, who was silent and wide-eyed with fear, on her bed before she began to search through her toy box. Finally, she found it: a torch and a plastic bat toy. The bat had belonged to Bill when he was younger, but he had gotten tired of toys and so she took it instead. Josie had always laughed at her saying that it was a boy's toy, but Leanne had always wanted to keep it.

Working quickly, she tore down her pictures and paintings off her wall and stole the blue-tack she had used for them to stick the bat onto the window. She then got her torch and balanced it at an angle on her desk so that it shone out behind the toy bat but was far away enough that its circle of light was quite large.

"Let's hope the batteries stay up and this actually works," she whispered, looking over Mary-Anne and seeing that the small child was now weeping and sniffling quietly. Downstairs they could hear Bill's agonised screams and their mother pleading. Mary-Anne was two years old and too young to understand what was really happening, but she did understand that everyone she loved was frightened and in pain right now, and that she possibly would be next. Leanne opened her closet and took out a bright pink plastic baseball bat she had played with in the summer. It wasn't as good as a real wooden bat but it was the best she had. She then crawled onto the bed and took Mary-Anne into her arms, all whilst watching the bedroom door and listening to her family's screams.

The fat man was leaning down over a sobbing Bill. "I will fix you," he was saying, "will have to take you apart and put you back together again, ok?" He smiled stupidly, before taking out of his pocket a needle. "I just need some thread," he continued, turning to look at Louise. "I need some thread and something to cut with. Nothing like this." He pointed to the kitchen knife still sticking in his side. "Something good," he emphasised, "so that it can cut through bones. Do you have an axe or something?"

The blood drained from Louise's face as she crawled on her knees begging, "Please, please do not take my boy away from me. Please, don't fix him, he's ok... honestly, he's ok..."

"But he isn't," said the round man as if she were crazy. "He can't even get up now. It's my fault. I'll fix him, honest injun I will."

John now got back to his feet and with a roar, and a scream from his mother, he ran at the large behemoth. The giant man screamed at the boy, insulted that he was being attacked again, and then threw the child into the wall. John slammed into it and slunk to the floor like a discarded ragdoll, his head leaving a large smatter of blood on the wall where he had been injured. Louise ran over to him, horrified that her unconscious child may be dead.

"Why?" she cried, looking at the fat man. "You've hurt both my sons, please leave me alone now!"

"But it's not my fault, it's them who hurt me and I got mad. I will fix them."

"Stop breaking them in the first place!" she shrieked, feeling like she was going insane, when there was a polite cough.

The man and Louise turned to see Josie standing at the end of the corridor. The dog was in her arms. It was bandaged up and seemingly unconscious.

"S-s-sometimes," Josie said shakily, watching the fat man carefully, "i-if you w-want to f-fix something, you c-can use b-bandages not... not... y'know..." She nodded at the needle in the large man's hand.

He watched her for a minute before looking at the now unconscious Bill on the stairway, his face pale and his body twisted; he looked at the bleeding and equally unconscious John; he looked at Louise weeping, and then he looked back at a frightened Josie.

"No," he said, "I think that Mr Scarecrow was right; everything is broken and I'm just doing what is right and natural by chopping everything up, then putting it back together again." He smiled genuinely. "I am making the world a better place."

"Josie, Josie run!" screamed Louise as the man began to walk towards her child.

Josie, the dog still in her arms, vanished behind the wall into the kitchen. When in there she put the dog onto the side and grabbed the bread knife, watching with a shaking hand for the man to arrive. He never did.

Instead, when she left he almost immediately forgot about her because Louise, realising she needed to distract him away from her daughter, ran forwards and ripped the knife out of his side, causing him to roar in pain. She then ran out into the pouring rain and screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Please!" she cried, her voice breaking and sore from the volume, and from how her voice tore out of her throat. "Please, oh god, please, help me! Help my babies! Please, he's gonna kill us all!"

She stood in the street, tall town houses and towers surrounding her, and she knew that hundreds of people were behind the endless number of blank, black, boarded up windows, but only the pounding rain and sounds of lightning and thunder answered her. The only break from the darkness was a light shining out of her daughters' bedroom window. She could see the 'bat signal' being reflected onto the house opposite. Leanne had somehow done this...

Before she could think any more she let out one last scream before the man grabbed her from behind and with one large hand covered her mouth and nose. Her legs began to kick automatically as she brought up her hands to try and rip his one hand from her face.

"I just wanted to fix things," he complained, "I was just doing my job, I –"

His rant was suddenly cut off and she was released. She fell to the ground and turned. Her heart stopped for a moment. In front of her was the slumped form of the large man. Behind him was a tall black shadow. It looked at her, its pure white eyes glowing in the dark.

Was this Batman? He seemed a lot scarier than she'd anticipated, and her instincts told her that he was a villain too and that she needed to run away from him. However, her kids were still in the house and she was logical enough to know that he was a hero.

"M-my babies," she stammered. "He hurt them, I-I need to get them to the hospital but –"

Batman took something that looked like some sort of radio transmitter from out of his belt and began talking into it. "Gordon," he commanded, "get to Burnley. Number 17, a tall town house. A family has been attacked by Humpty Dumpty and needs critical assistance." He then hung up. "Get inside," he told Louise. "Lock the doors and fix up your kids. The police will be here in five minutes or less."

She nodded and ran back to her home. She took one last glance of the street before she closed her door, but both Batman and Humpty Dumpty were gone.

Description
A.N- Ok guys, as you know it takes me quite a long time to up-date. Whilst planning and writing the next chapter in this story, I ended up doing this peice on the side. It was initially meant to be inter-changed between action from the main characters, but I thought it worked better alone. Therefore the main two characters Tetch and Crane aren't in this chapter, but I hope it'll be something to tide you over while the proper chapter is being written. I thought it would be better to load up as a buffer chapter, rather than deleting it.

Now beta'd many thanks to my beta, eeyop1428
__________________________________________________________________________________________

There is a time before the arrival of a storm when the air is heavy with electricity and the atmosphere is thick and tense. It's almost a relief when the clouds break and the rain falls down weightily, crashing on to the earth with such force that it destroys and breaks the vegetation and hardened pavements; the lightning flashes across a dark sky, temporarily lighting up the scenery with a flare of white, coursing energy that simultaneously thrills and terrifies; the deep booms of thunder call out shortly afterwards, frightening all living things and making them cower under the storm's brutal regime.

However, that quiet tense time before – when everyone hides in the safety of their homes; when the animals scuttle down dark holes and the deep cavernous Gotham drains; when bones ache and headaches pound and breathing is difficult, all with the natural anticipation of oncoming, unstoppable violence – this was what Gotham had been experiencing almost all day. The Rogues all went to their hideouts and waited; Batman donned his uniform early and stood like a giant gargoyle on one of Gotham's mightiest sky scrapers, Wayne Towers, whereas Two-Face brooded in the dark, his dark alter-ego becoming steadily stronger and more irate as the darkness slowly spread itself over the land.

In Officer Kelly's home his unfortunate family, still unaware of his fate, sat closely together in the living room, still and frightened. The electricity was still off. There was no artificial lighting and the windows were boarded. Despite being a city it was silent, for no one was outside and everyone was hiding. There was no television, no telephones and no radios, so no communication was available.

One of Kelly's children, precocious nine-year-old Leanne, crawled away from her dozing mother and tense siblings and went to the boarded up window. There was a crack of light shining through and when she put her eye to it she could see the pale, grey sky dimming. When the sun, hidden by the clouds, finally retreated and left their side of the world in darkness, she took in a deep breath like one about to dive into black, murky waters.

Suddenly, there was a car crash outside. It was obnoxiously loud, shrieking tyres preceding a loud crunching sound as the metal car twisted around some large, immovable object.

Louise was snapped out of her doze and the children around her winced. Her baby girl, Mary-Anne, who was still in her pushchair, whined anxiously.

"Leanne!" hissed Louise, "get back here!"

Leanne shuffled back towards her mother and older brothers sheepishly. "I was waiting for papa," she responded in a complaining tone. "It's gone dark outside but he isn't back yet."

Louise felt her heart jolt but didn't allow it to affect her face. "Well just stay here with me," she continued to whisper. "Night time is dangerous when this many Rogues are out. We'll all sleep here together tonight. I'll go get blankets, all of you must stay here and do not talk!"

Louise and Kelly lived in a relatively small town house. However, Kelly, being an officer, earned enough of a wage to support his family and to have them live in a house as opposed to an apartment like most of their friends. Louise worked part time at the local supermarket, her money bringing in the little extra they needed to occasionally take the kids away on short weekend breaks or to buy extra things, such as toys or books for school. Their house was little but it had two levels, an upstairs and a downstairs. They didn't have a basement but they did have a very small attic that held their junk and a family of squirrels. Louise, in short, should not have been so afraid to step out of her living room to go upstairs to grab a few blankets, but she felt terrified. A lump settled in her throat at the thought of leaving her children alone in the living room on the ground level, and her heart raced as she stepped out and looked up at the dark stairs leading to the upstairs bathroom and bedrooms. She wondered if she should just forget the whole thing and let them sleep downstairs as they were, but she couldn't ask her children to sleep on the floor with nothing above or below them just because she was too scared. She had hoped Kelly would be back by now with news of how most, if not all, of the villains had been rounded up, but he wasn't here and there had been no news on the Rogues, so she had to assume they were still out there.

She glanced back at her children. Bill was holding the baby with Josie beside him, Josie gently stroking the baby's hair, and John was sitting with Leanne on his lap, the pair looking through a picture book but neither of them speaking. Good, she just needed them to stay quiet. God knows if someone like the Joker was outside... no! She wouldn't allow herself to think of those things! Instead she cautiously climbed up the stairs, watched by her anxious children.

She climbed up each step slower than usual, her eyes fixed on the landing above and her hand gripping the stair rail a little too tightly. Every movement was specific and careful. There was a creak on the fifth stair that gave her pause for a moment. Her head cocked ever so slowly to the side as she unconsciously listened out for her children. All was silent for a few heart beats, before she could hear the slight sound of paper in a book being turned and her children's careful breathing. She knew that the fifth stair creaked, they all did, though normally they never really noticed; but in the tense silence, the slight creak now sounded like a loud, audacious threat. She continued on until she finally reached the top, the journey seemingly like a long and arduous trek up a steep mountain side. But it was not over yet.

The dark of night had not completely taken over yet. Instead it was the strange deep blue of late evening that cast its mysterious hue about the house, shadowing objects to make them appear larger and more threatening than what they really were. It was lucky that it was her own home, or Louise may have lost her confidence and ran back downstairs sooner. Instead she rolled her shoulders, telling herself that she was an adult and to stop being stupid, and opened the door to the first bedroom. It was her's and Kelly's. It was a humble room and a little untidy. Clothes were strewn across the floor from the mayhem of this morning when both realised they had woken up late for work, and there was a plate of cookies left on the top of their little chest of drawers against the bed from when they had guiltily scoffed the last of the yummy food the night before. She smiled softly, a small voice in the back of her head barely whispering that she might never see her fiancé again, before she pulled the quilt off her bed.

Outside a dog began to bark incessantly. Louise glanced at the boarded up window but decided to not let it spook her; she knew that particular dog – it belonged to a neighbours – and the dog was well known for being very noisy and barking at practically anything that moved. She was a bit concerned that her neighbours hadn't brought the dog indoors with them, but maybe the dog was too noisy and therefore a risk to keep in the house. It sounded brutal, but it was better to let the dog stay outside and, worst case scenario, get killed, than have it in the house barking and yapping and attracting attention so that someone broke in and the entire family was slaughtered. Gotham was a brutal city not because it wanted to be, but because it had to be.

Then there was a creak on the stair. Her eyes widened and her heart leapt into her throat. She turned around stiffly before seeing the small scared face of her seven-year-old daughter Josie. It did not comfort her, but rather her fear for what she would see had now transferred into a fear for her family – why was her child upstairs when she had expressly told them to stay where they were; why had her brothers allowed her to go?

Josie's pale hair was wet slightly with sweat and her blue eyes were as wide as her mother's; they stared at each other for a moment that existed in time like a still frame, each female looking so like the other that the family resemblance was undeniable and somewhat heartbreaking. Then in a sudden movement the spell was broken and Louise rushed forward, the quilt still in her hands. "What is it?" she barely whispered. "Why are you up here?"

Josie shook her head, as if too frightened to speak before mouthing, "We think someone's waiting outside."

There was a faint rumble outside, almost like the sound of thunder, but no rain or lightning seemed to accompany it. Louise hadn't registered it anyway, instead thinking:

Her daddy, Kelly?

A neighbour?

A stranger left in the dark?

A Rogue?

These words ran through her head faster than she could process them before she gave a single nod and began to slide downstairs with her child, leaving the quilt on the top of the landing. They were too afraid to walk and so they crept down in a strange motion, almost like sliding down on their rears but without actually sitting on the stairs and causing a loud bump each time they descended down a step. They both had the sense to skip the fifth step altogether.

In the living room, Leanne was holding Mary-Anne and both John and Bill stood with grim faces, each holding a knife. They looked like child soldiers, older before their time, weary and with a fear etched deep into their bones. It broke her heart to see them looking like that but she knew that she needed them to be tough and to be able to fight if they were going to survive growing up in a city like Gotham. They all shared a tight look as she sent Josie to stand with her siblings. She then took the knife off Bill and walked to the window. Peeking through the same crack Leanne had looked through earlier, Louise at first could only see the darkness of the night sky until something went across the crack quickly. She stepped back, her heart beating. She slunk out of the living room and looked at her front door. Whatever had moved outside the house had walked in the direction of the front door. The front door had a window next to it (boarded up of course) and a peep-hole at its centre.

She gulped and headed towards the peep-hole, tiptoeing slightly to see through it. There was another distant rumble of thunder, but this time it was closer. The air was heavier than before and the heat was almost unbearable.

Behind Louise, her two boys and Josie slid out of the living room, sinking into the darkness, and went up behind her with an unnatural stealth. They were backing their mom up – no way was she standing alone to face some entity separated from her by a mere piece of wood. John still had his own knife but Bill now had a rolling pin; he was aware that a rolling pin as a weapon would be comical in most of the cartoons he watched, but he had decided that here, in reality, it could do some damage if he needed it to. Josie didn't have anything, and her brothers had not wanted her to come with them. But Josie was seven years old and determined not to be afraid of anything, feeling that, as the youngest (short of Mary-Anne), she had to prove herself. Still, she flanked further behind her two brothers.

In the living room, Leanne stood holding the baby tightly to her chest, aware that she would be the last thing standing in the way of their most precious family member should someone evil be waiting outside. She was breathing noisily through her mouth; she couldn't help it, it was as if all the clear oxygen had been sucked away from the room. It was too hot, too stifling and too difficult to breathe through her nose. When she heard the next sound of oncoming thunder, she gulped with difficulty and began to hate the feeling of her t-shirt sticking to her back from sweat.

Louise put her eye to the peep-hole, her face so close to the door that she could feel her breath radiating back off its wood on to her face. At first she couldn't make out anything, but then an eye suddenly appeared, large and distorted, making her leap back.

"Excuse me," called a whiny voice outside, "excuse me, but I need help." The door was knocked by what must have been a heavy fist. "Please, it's my doggy, he's broken. Can I come in? I need help."

There was a high-pitched, pained yelping sound, the kind a dog made when injured, and Louise suddenly realised that her neighbours' dog had stopped yapping some time ago.

"Please," whined the voice, "please let us in, the dog is dying."

There was more pained yelping, this time it extended for a little longer. Louise closed her eyes, feeling torn. The dog was outside being tormented, but if she let in this man, surely he would kill her and her children. She couldn't risk it, yet the sound of the innocent animal suffering was torturous.

"He's killing it," she heard Bill mutter desperately, his teeth clenched together.

She turned and glared at him, noticing her children for the first time. She put a shaking finger to her lips and shook her head. He closed his mouth but still looked defiant.

"I don't know what I have to do to make you believe me," said the muffled voice from outside, "but trust me, I'm just some fat guy stuck out here with a broken dog I need to fix. Please, don't be afraid. I don't wanna hurt nobody."

"Maybe we can take the dog but hit him round the head, knocking him out," she heard Josie whisper behind her.

"No," John had replied, "we can't, now get back in the living room, Josie!"

"We can't let it die!"

Louise faced them again and saw that they were looking at one another and looking disobedient. Even though John was backing up his mother, she could see that his heart wasn't in it, that he wanted to save the dog as much as Josie and Bill. Her chest was so tightly constricted from the growing pressure of the situation that she was now in absolute physical pain. It was hard to think when she could feel her children's aggression; the man wouldn't shut up and the dog kept making those terrible, pained sounds.

'If I let that dog die out there,' she thought, 'they'll never forgive me. But should I rather that than risking their lives? Maybe they'll understand when they're older... or maybe they'll always see me as a monster but will at least be alive to do so.'

They dog let out a low howl this time, clearly in pained death throes. Gritting her teeth and cursing herself, Louise unlocked the door and flung it open.

A round-bodied fat man in a long raincoat stood with the local dog (she recognised that it was her neighbours', but she didn't recognise the man at all) bleeding heavily in his arms. The man was huge but had a dopey sort of face. She held out her knife threateningly, making him step back, little black hamster-like eyes shining but betraying no emotion.

"Gimme the dog," she growled, "then get the fuck away from my home!"

He put the panting dog down on her stoop and stepped away, his hands up. Her two boys came round and cautiously pulled the dog inside, it yelping with pain as they did. A trail of blood was left on the ground. She wanted to ask the man what he had been doing to it, but she no longer cared; they had saved the dog and he had backed off.

"Can I at least come inside?" he asked. "It's scary and dark out here. And I think a storm is coming. It's been bad weather all day." He smiled at her.

She stared back, momentarily stumped; the situation was bordering on bizarre. Louise then shook her head and began to close the door.

"Wait, wait!" the man called and for a moment a flash of guilt shot through her system like lightning and she wondered if she had saved a dog, but was leaving a man outside to his doom. However, she could trust the dog not to hurt her family; the strange man on the other hand, she could not. She continued to shut the door as all these thoughts flew through her mind, but the man ran like a quarter back and slammed into the door, pushing it open and throwing her back onto the floor.

She looked up at him in shock. Lightning flashed behind him before torrential rain began to pour down. She could see now that the raincoat he wore was far too tight and that underneath it he was wearing the hideous orange jumpsuits she knew Arkham inmates wore. Louise wanted to scream but she couldn't – instead she scrambled backwards as he sauntered into her home. Her two boys rushed out of the kitchen, each brandishing their weapons. They had taken the dog into the kitchen and were working out how to fix the poor creature up so it would survive until the morning – when they would be able to hopefully leave their home and find a vet – when they had heard the door banging open and realised, with terror-stricken hearts, that they had left their mother alone with a strange, heavy-set man. Josie was left with the dog as the two boys ran back out to defend their mother.

"No!" Louise screamed, running towards them to try and stop them before they got themselves killed. "No, boys, no!"

The fat man screamed as John cut into his side with the knife. The poor boy couldn't pull the knife back out however and the fat man lifted him up and flung him at his mother, making them both fall further into the dark hallway. (It was at this moment that Leanne with the baby ran past them and up the stairs, but in the darkness and chaos, no one noticed.) Bill came in from the other side and had beaten the rolling pin onto the man's arm, hoping to temporarily stop him using it. However, the pin instead broke in half and the man roared out, "Broken, broken, you're all broken! He was right, he was right!" The man began to weep as he shouted his bizarre revelation, grabbing Bill and throwing him so roughly onto the stairs that something in the child snapped. Bill screamed in agony, his body contorted in a way that revealed that his back had been badly injured.

Meanwhile, Leanne had run upstairs into the bedroom she and Josie shared. She slammed the door shut and pushed her chest of drawers in front of it, praying silently for her family to survive. Then she settled Mary-Anne, who was silent and wide-eyed with fear, on her bed before she began to search through her toy box. Finally, she found it: a torch and a plastic bat toy. The bat had belonged to Bill when he was younger, but he had gotten tired of toys and so she took it instead. Josie had always laughed at her saying that it was a boy's toy, but Leanne had always wanted to keep it.

Working quickly, she tore down her pictures and paintings off her wall and stole the blue-tack she had used for them to stick the bat onto the window. She then got her torch and balanced it at an angle on her desk so that it shone out behind the toy bat but was far away enough that its circle of light was quite large.

"Let's hope the batteries stay up and this actually works," she whispered, looking over Mary-Anne and seeing that the small child was now weeping and sniffling quietly. Downstairs they could hear Bill's agonised screams and their mother pleading. Mary-Anne was two years old and too young to understand what was really happening, but she did understand that everyone she loved was frightened and in pain right now, and that she possibly would be next. Leanne opened her closet and took out a bright pink plastic baseball bat she had played with in the summer. It wasn't as good as a real wooden bat but it was the best she had. She then crawled onto the bed and took Mary-Anne into her arms, all whilst watching the bedroom door and listening to her family's screams.

The fat man was leaning down over a sobbing Bill. "I will fix you," he was saying, "will have to take you apart and put you back together again, ok?" He smiled stupidly, before taking out of his pocket a needle. "I just need some thread," he continued, turning to look at Louise. "I need some thread and something to cut with. Nothing like this." He pointed to the kitchen knife still sticking in his side. "Something good," he emphasised, "so that it can cut through bones. Do you have an axe or something?"

The blood drained from Louise's face as she crawled on her knees begging, "Please, please do not take my boy away from me. Please, don't fix him, he's ok... honestly, he's ok..."

"But he isn't," said the round man as if she were crazy. "He can't even get up now. It's my fault. I'll fix him, honest injun I will."

John now got back to his feet and with a roar, and a scream from his mother, he ran at the large behemoth. The giant man screamed at the boy, insulted that he was being attacked again, and then threw the child into the wall. John slammed into it and slunk to the floor like a discarded ragdoll, his head leaving a large smatter of blood on the wall where he had been injured. Louise ran over to him, horrified that her unconscious child may be dead.

"Why?" she cried, looking at the fat man. "You've hurt both my sons, please leave me alone now!"

"But it's not my fault, it's them who hurt me and I got mad. I will fix them."

"Stop breaking them in the first place!" she shrieked, feeling like she was going insane, when there was a polite cough.

The man and Louise turned to see Josie standing at the end of the corridor. The dog was in her arms. It was bandaged up and seemingly unconscious.

"S-s-sometimes," Josie said shakily, watching the fat man carefully, "i-if you w-want to f-fix something, you c-can use b-bandages not... not... y'know..." She nodded at the needle in the large man's hand.

He watched her for a minute before looking at the now unconscious Bill on the stairway, his face pale and his body twisted; he looked at the bleeding and equally unconscious John; he looked at Louise weeping, and then he looked back at a frightened Josie.

"No," he said, "I think that Mr Scarecrow was right; everything is broken and I'm just doing what is right and natural by chopping everything up, then putting it back together again." He smiled genuinely. "I am making the world a better place."

"Josie, Josie run!" screamed Louise as the man began to walk towards her child.

Josie, the dog still in her arms, vanished behind the wall into the kitchen. When in there she put the dog onto the side and grabbed the bread knife, watching with a shaking hand for the man to arrive. He never did.

Instead, when she left he almost immediately forgot about her because Louise, realising she needed to distract him away from her daughter, ran forwards and ripped the knife out of his side, causing him to roar in pain. She then ran out into the pouring rain and screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Please!" she cried, her voice breaking and sore from the volume, and from how her voice tore out of her throat. "Please, oh god, please, help me! Help my babies! Please, he's gonna kill us all!"

She stood in the street, tall town houses and towers surrounding her, and she knew that hundreds of people were behind the endless number of blank, black, boarded up windows, but only the pounding rain and sounds of lightning and thunder answered her. The only break from the darkness was a light shining out of her daughters' bedroom window. She could see the 'bat signal' being reflected onto the house opposite. Leanne had somehow done this...

Before she could think any more she let out one last scream before the man grabbed her from behind and with one large hand covered her mouth and nose. Her legs began to kick automatically as she brought up her hands to try and rip his one hand from her face.

"I just wanted to fix things," he complained, "I was just doing my job, I –"

His rant was suddenly cut off and she was released. She fell to the ground and turned. Her heart stopped for a moment. In front of her was the slumped form of the large man. Behind him was a tall black shadow. It looked at her, its pure white eyes glowing in the dark.

Was this Batman? He seemed a lot scarier than she'd anticipated, and her instincts told her that he was a villain too and that she needed to run away from him. However, her kids were still in the house and she was logical enough to know that he was a hero.

"M-my babies," she stammered. "He hurt them, I-I need to get them to the hospital but –"

Batman took something that looked like some sort of radio transmitter from out of his belt and began talking into it. "Gordon," he commanded, "get to Burnley. Number 17, a tall town house. A family has been attacked by Humpty Dumpty and needs critical assistance." He then hung up. "Get inside," he told Louise. "Lock the doors and fix up your kids. The police will be here in five minutes or less."

She nodded and ran back to her home. She took one last glance of the street before she closed her door, but both Batman and Humpty Dumpty were gone.