To Good Men

I remember early in my career one night, Gordon looked at me quizzically and asked a question I keep hearing, often from myself.

I was in the pouring rain, a would-be rapist in one hand while my other was knotted into a fist dripping with his blood. Gordon surprised me, something I didn't let happen ever again. He stumbled upon me caught in a rage as I pummeled the man's face in. We weren't yet friends, but we'd worked together before, so he didn't even pull his gun. He only reached for it.

"You're one of the good guys, right?" He asked.

I responded by dropping the wretch into a puddle of rain and rat feces, then taking out my grappling hook and lifting myself away from the scene. That was the last time Gordon ever watched me exit anywhere.

A year or two later, I had my first real conversation with Clark. Just like before, I'd worked with him previously, but this was still early in our relationship. We didn't really know each other, and he still thought I didn't know he was Superman. We weren't friends back then.

I was staking out a Gotham drug king-pin that was carrying out a deal in Metropolis when the red and blue boy-scout appeared. He flew up to the rooftop I was stationed on with a quizzical look on his face. I can't blame him, if I caught him surveilling a building in Gotham back in those days, I'd be curious, and maybe more than a little territorial as well. I pretended to ignore him, but he's Superman.

"You're one of the good guys, right?" He asked.

I replied by shooting a canister of tear gas into the building across the street, then grappling over and slamming my body through the window. Metro PD got fifteen collars that night.

I do that whenever people ask that question: I stay silent and I act on it. People need to realize that good isn't just a category we can box people into, it's about action. My Catholic father would have some qualms with that but ultimately agree, and the same goes for my Jewish mother. They both instilled in me an inherent desire to be thought of as good while also teaching me that the best way towards that was to actually do good things for good reasons. For the right reasons. Heaven and Hell were far off and probably not real, what mattered was doing the right thing every time I had the chance. I respond to those questions with action because that is the only appropriate response.

That's what I tell myself at least.

The truth is, I don't know if my actions are good. Selina likes to quote Bojack Horseman when I make such comments and tells me that I'm fetishizing my own sadness. Maybe she's right. I know for a fact that Clark and Diana question their actions as well, but that's different. Neither of them are Batman. Batman is not a symbol of hope and all things good in the world.

Take an ornate Catholic Church interior: Diana is the angel, the kind messenger sent here to guide and protect. Clark, no matter how much he wishes he weren't, is Jesus as of late. I'm not in the interior. I'm the gargoyle on the outside. I am ugly and cruel and scary in order to protect the worshipers inside from everything uglier and crueler and scarier on the outside that would try to get in. I like being the gargoyle because someone has to be. But just because I'm not a symbol of hope does not mean that I don't have a role to play in inspiring hope.

I'm Batman. I'm supposed to keep people safe from the monsters that would prey on them by taking on the qualities of those monsters. But I can never—must never become the monster itself. Sometimes I wonder when it is that I go too far. Whether it's smaller actions like my brutality or larger ones like Brother Eye, I make mistakes that make me less of a gargoyle and more of an actual demon. Every time I try to do something so good that I might shake these wings and scales off my back for a second, something brings me back. So I try and save my good deeds for when I become Bruce Wayne again, but the same problem arises.

Barry once asked me how I managed to build the Batcave without anyone noticing. I told him I used undocumented migrant laborers who were paid handsomely and given papers. He laughed, because there was no way that I'd do that. Diana once remarked that my bankrolling the Justice League had to have made my investors suspicious. I told her that I cook my books and she rolled her eyes. On paper, Bruce Wayne is a corrupt capitalist. I've hacked my own FBI file before, there are theories that I'm connected to everyone from El Chapo to Lex Luthor.

It even affects my private life and family, too. Clark asked how I managed to hide the boys' bruises and cuts from Gotham Academy school officials, and I told him that whenever a school counsellor comes knocking, I build another dormitory or create another scholarship. It bothers me to know that to maintain this lie, I've had to paint myself as the very thing my parents always told me to never become. Yet I keep doing it. I funnel money into off-shore accounts. I find families on the border abandoned by coyotes and promise them a house in a suburb in Michigan if they build yet another safe-house for me. I've paid bribes. To save a boat of sex slaves, I had to implicate myself in their capture and transport. Bruce Wayne has to get his hands dirty just as much as Batman, and that's what the others don't realize. In order for both Bruce Wayne, the hope of Gotham, and Batman, it's ever-present gargoyle to coexist, we have to do things that neither of us want to do.

The night of February First, I did one of those things.

Don't get me wrong, I supported the Gotham NAACP receiving a five million dollar donation. But I knew Joseph Grant – the man donating it – too well to be happy about it. Most of the room knew that he was a public supporter the Trump/Pence campaign, and had himself tweeted many disparaging remarks about the Black Lives Matter movement and Standing Rock protests. Those well-versed in legal history that gets swept under the rug by buying out newspapers also know that, like Trump's father, he was caught in a housing discrimination scandal a few years back.

Grant's family was also a founding family of the Gotham City Ku Klux Klan, and he himself was an honorary member. This was a fact known only to those of us in the room that made up the elite of the Gotham elite, and perhaps a few of the older members of Gotham's NAACP. The man was a racist, that was a verifiable fact. Yet there he was in my house, having a party celebrating a thinly veiled pre-emptive cover-up to the questions that would be asked during his nephew's campaign for governor. It made me sick, but I did it anyway, because this was the type of event that Bruce Wayne had to throw. It kept up appearances.

Lucius walked over to me, giving a small, socially acceptable hug which ended in a professionally friendly handshake, "I'm glad to see you're enjoying yourself, Mr. Wayne."

"I'm happier to see that you're enjoying yourself, Lucius. The happier I manage to keep the head of Gotham's NAACP, the more I ensure Grant doesn't rob me of my title as Gotham's most charitable man."

Lucius laughed, "Oh, Mr. Wayne you kidder."

"In all truth, Lucius, I think this is a phenomenal project. In fact, I'd like to toss my own hat in. Next year, I was thinking of—"

"Okay, Bruce you can stop, the reporter's not looking our way anymore."

I relaxed a little and unclenched my body, "I meant everything I said, you know."

Lucius shook his head, "It was all true, but you didn't mean it. I know you're enjoying this about as much as I'd enjoy having Bane as my chiropractor."

I smirked, "I'm not saying that was more enjoyable, but I was having back troubles when that happened, you know. So for a quick moment..."

Lucius shook his head again, "And people say you don't joke enough."

I took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. Bringing it to my mouth, I muttered, "That's the other guy."

Lucius smiled.

Taking another sip, I asked him the question that had been in my mind for a while, "Aren't you worried?"

"About this biting me in the back?" Lucius said with his hand on his chin, "No, I don't think so. There's a certain level of caution that went into finally making the decision to accept Mr. Grant's proposal, but ultimately, I don't think it'll hurt us too bad. If organizations like mine denied every check that came to us just because the person signing it had a less than reputable character, that would ruin us faster than any backlash would. You're old enough to understand that now, son."

I nodded along, largely unsurprised by his answer. There were obviously stark differences, but in that moment, I realized that what Lucius was doing wasn't too different from what I had to do to maintain the lie of my night activities. I wished he hadn't, most of all because his method meant that he still had to call someone as awful as Grant, "mister."

I looked around the room, annoyed with some of the names I recognized in attendance. "Still, the company he keeps...isn't this hard for you?"

Lucius just smiled and shook his head, "You should really read some Ellison sometime, Bruce."

I made a mental note to have Alfred purchase Invisible Man on tape for me.

At the pompous sound of a silver spoon hitting my third best crystal set, Lucius excused himself from my side to join Grant onstage, while I took my own seat at a table in the front row. Damian was already there, his head held aloft and a petulant scowl on his face. Tim and Duke were doing their best to appear interested, but I saw the tell-tale sign of a thumb war being fought under the table. I wanted to sigh but didn't, at least one of us had to appear acceptably invested by social standard.

"Ladies and gentleman," Grant said into the microphone with a haughty air. "I am pleased to be here with you all tonight, celebrating both diversity and persistence through adversity in our glorious city. I'm especially pleased that none of my own money is being spent in throwing this party."

A laugh went around the room.

"Father," I heard Damian whispering. "At your instruction I shall purchase majority share of his own company through one of our shell organizations."

"No hostile takeovers before dessert, Damian," I dismissively retorted with a wide, fake smile on my face.

Grant continued his speech, "In all honesty though, thank you, Bruce for your contribution to this endeavor. This is a fantastic party, and I can't wait to see the party you throw when you inevitably reassert yourself as the most Charitable Man in Gotham."

Another round of laughs around the room. I made a mental note to revisit the Disney World/WayneCorp Party for a Greener Earth proposal. Perhaps I'd scrap the whole idea. It seemed too predictable.

"When I first decided to donate five million dollars to the Gotham NAACP, I was actually at a small party gathering. Some of you may remember the Republicans of Gotham benefit dinner three weeks ago. I had the idea at that party during a conversation with a friend of mine. Well, when I told my friend I planned to donate one million dollars to the NAACP, he asked me why. Handouts and the like aren't typically the style of our party, he said. I told him that this was true. I don't want to get into politics here, but it is indeed a fact that our party tends to advocate for independent movement upward through our nations meritocratic system. But for so long, not everyone had access to the resources necessary to move upward. And that's all that the NAACP does."

Grant put an arm around Lucius in an awkward type of politician hug.

"I told my friend as I'm telling you right now that I will proudly support the NAACP. For it is an organization that is helping the remaining disenfranchised people of color in our great Gotham community work towards the future and all the benefits that we've all been blessed with. By giving to the NAACP, we invest in Gotham's future, not provide a handout."

There was dignified, respectable applause throughout the room. Lucius looked please but I'd known the man long enough to be able to tell when he was swallowing his tongue.

My phone went off in my pocket. One pulse and two small beeps. Emergency news alert. I decided that I'd check it in a second. When I heard Damian's phone go off, I cursed him in my head for disobeying a direct order and decided that I'd hide it again to teach him a lesson. He'd probably try to kill me for it, but that wasn't a big concern. When I heard Tim's phone go off, I knew it was time to have Alfred teach them proper social etiquette again.

When Duke pulled out his phone and stared at it for seconds, I knew there was something wrong.

"Mr. Wayne," he said as he sneakily passed his phone to me.

I didn't look down. I didn't have to. All around us, the ball room had transformed into an amphitheater of chirps and buzzes. Gotham's social elite were retrieving phones, fiddling with watches, and staring into blank space as they read augmented reality displays invisible to the rest of us. I reasoned there were at least fifty different news apps that were all reporting at the exact same moment. There's a very limited number of things that would cause that great a response in Gotham, the city where a zombie on a rampage is delegated to the third page news.

Ever mysteriously dutiful, Alfred appeared right in the nick of time to spill a hot plate all over my lap.

"Goodness sir!" He exclaimed while he hurriedly covered my now singed privates with a cloth.

Poor Helena, I thought, Damian would get his wish of being my only biological child after all.

"I'm so sorry sir," Alfred continued as he began to lead me out of the room, "I was so dismayed when I saw the news on young Master Thomas's phone that I lost my composure. It will never happen again. There's another set of formal wear laid out for you in your private quarters."

"Thank you for your foresight, Alfred," I said. Once we were in the hall, away from prying ears, I asked, "What do we do if Bruce Wayne doesn't come back from his bedroom in a timely manner?"

My ever faithful companion smiled, "Well Miss Vale, I'm unable to disclose the comings and goings of my employer. But I assure you that the charge that he would leave a charitable event to...'play host to' a pair of models is absurd! I long respected your news station, but I am appalled to find they are investigating such lewd rumors which are obviously false."

The closest entrance to the Batcave was one of the oldest. Once again disobeying my psychiatrist, I positioned the hands to show the exact time of my parent's death, revealing a fireman's pole hidden in an alcove in the wall.

I landed in the Batcave with a soft, barely audible 'thud.' I made a mental note to apologize to Alfred for tossing all my clothes on the floor, but I was in a hurry. Luckily, it was easier to get into the Batsuit than it was to get out of my tuxedo.

I hopped into the Batmobile and turned the key. Hearing the engine roar to life, I began to speed through the Batcave towards the exit. As I passed the Batcopter and Batwing, I heard Damian's voice in my ear, through the Batcoms.

"Father," he said as though he were ordering me to respond. It was a great improvement from his usual method of interacting with authority figures. At least he wasn't talking like I was the child.

"Yes, son? Is there a problem?" I asked.

"What ever happened to Batcow? Robin-slash-Lark-slash-Signal doesn't believe me about it."

"I'm hanging up now," I stated through gritted teeth.

In any other situation I might have excused a little lightheartedness and humored his request. But not tonight. I already knew that I wasn't going to be in the mood for jokes.

"This is Tom Thompson," the voice on the radio stated. "And I'm coming at you live from the site of yet another Joker attack."