Winter Kiss

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.
~Simon Wiesenthal~

The next morning was a bright one. The weather lately was extremely shocking. Seldom does Gotham ever have nice weather, so now that we were having sunny spells in autumn it was amazing. I took this nice weather as a chance to get out of the house for a while. I was a bit of an OCD freak when it came to my schedules. When something didn’t go as planned, my mood would be tarnished for at least 24 hours. In the mornings I liked to go for a jog through Gotham – the concrete jungle as I like to call it - and I tended to wear oversized headphones. They didn’t necessarily have to be playing any music; they just decreased the chance of people talking to me. When people talked to me, they’d through my schedule off course. And also I wasn’t much of a people person.

Once again, when I first woke up, Bruce wasn’t lying beside me. I assumed he was at Wayne Enterprises as usual, when we both should have been on our honeymoon now. A honeymoon in Hawaii sounded idealistic at the moment, but now that had been thrown out of the window.

As soon as I was ready, I darted out of the penthouse, not even having a chance to say goodbye to Alfred. I turned the volume up on my iPod as I placed the headphones over my head. All These Things I’ve Done by The Killers was the first song to play when I pressed shuffle and soon after I was jogging smoothly down the concrete path.

Outside, the weather was still extremely humid like the day before. The air was like blankets and I began finding it hard to breathe. The bad thing about jogging in nice weather was that the streets were always crowded. Nice weather attracted more people, so I had to swerve in an out of people to be able to jog at all. People were so inconsiderate when they didn’t know you. They’re never bothered about anyone but themselves and wait for you to move out of the way before they even think about moving themselves.

By the time I had found a relatively smooth path, I felt a strange vibration in my upper thigh. I felt around and realised that it was my cell phone ringing. I came to a full stop in the middle of the path, to everyone else’s displeasure judging by the annoyed sighs and grumbles. I stood against the wall and removed my headphones to take the call. The caller ID read ‘Tyler Banks’. This was my boss. I worked for a Gotham newspaper, Gotham Daily. Tyler was a stuck up jerk who I happened to hate.

“Hello?” I began, after answering the phone.

The gruff voice on the other end of the phone answered with, “Miss Rivera. I heard about your wedding yesterday. You have my deepest sympathy.” Don’t be fooled. He may seem like a caring and generous boss at the moment, calling up to see how one of his employees is doing on their time off. I knew this was only a set up into trickery.

“Yeah...well. Shit happens.” Poor choice of words. I hate phone conversations; I never know what to say.

“-Yes. Okay. Considering that you won’t be needing time off anymore, I’d like you to come in to work tomorrow. We’re low on staff and we need to have a brand new, plausible story in our newspaper. As you know profits are low and if we’re able to overtake Gotham Times profit wise, we’ll be back on track.” Gotham Times was a rival newspaper business which the newspaper I worked with had been competing against ever since I moved to Gotham. Mr Banks was eager to beat his rival and never succeeded in doing so, henceforth his grumpy attitude being taken out on his employees. All the employees were blamed for all his mistakes. It’s selfish to say that I thought I was being singled out by being treated terribly even more so than everyone else. But sometimes, that’s what it felt like.

“Okay, Mr Banks. I’ll be in my cubicle by half eight,” I sighed. At this point, I couldn’t refuse. Refusing meant I’d probably lose my job. It was already on the line as it was, with my tardiness and flop articles and stories.

“Goodbye, Miss Rivera,” Tyler stated before hanging up without a reply from me. I’d like to think he’s just a busy man, but reality of it all is that he’s just an uncaring ogre.

I continued with my jog until I reached a small corner shop. I was usually in here five minutes earlier, if it wasn’t for Tyler calling me up and throwing me off track. I grabbed the usual bottle of water and newspaper (Gotham Times but Tyler didn’t know this. Admittedly, the stories and articles in there were much more interesting and well wrote and it was also a lot cheaper than the newspaper I worked for. Tyler’s a jerk anyway).

Something caught my eye on the front of the newspaper, but before I could take a closer glance, the cashier stole the paper away from me and placed it in a plastic bag. I didn’t even want a bag. Nevertheless, she thrust her arm expectantly and mumbled, “Two fifty.” I deliberately dropped the money onto the counter and ignorantly walked off with the bag in hand, returning to my music.

The next place I jogged to was Gotham City Central Park. It tended to be calm and tranquil at this time of the morning, but you never can tell in a city so busy and bustling. I pulled out the newspaper from the plastic bag and looked at the front page. The headline read ’History Repeats’. I hadn’t been living here long so what could have repeated itself was beyond me. On the front page was a mug shot. At first I thought the picture was a gag, judging by the appearance of the man in the mug shot. The man’s make-up was poorly done in some kind of clown get up and his hair was just below his ear in limp curls. The greyscale image obscuring his features even more so wasn’t doing him any justice. Once reading the caption below, I realised this was no gag. He apparently went by the name, ‘The Joker’. Another picture below was a blurry CCTV shot of a man in a black cape. This was ‘Batman’.

I read the first paragraph, but the story was still extremely vague to me. Apparently, this joker guy escaped from Arkham Insane Asylum last night and Batman – who hadn’t been seen since The Joker was locked away – was also there on the scene. I couldn’t help giggling at the sound of the article. It sounded like some ridiculous children’s story. But I stifled the laughter when I realised this wasn’t a laughing matter. This was serious and judging by the way the article was written, this was going to strike fear into every Gotham citizen’s heart.

The article was intriguing and I couldn’t help but want to read more. However, I was soon interrupted before I had a chance to continue.

“Boo!” I heard someone whisper-shout in my ear. A squeaky squeal passed through my lips and I ended up throwing my bottle of water and my newspaper to the ground. I turned around quickly to come face to face with Bruce. I slapped his shoulder playfully when I realised who it was and hurriedly picked up the items.

“Bruce! That’s not funny! It’s not as if you haven’t made me angry all ready. Which by the way, I still am,” I uttered, deliberately facing away from him moodily.

“Don’t be like that. I said I’m sorry. I promise, I’ll do all of the rescheduling so you don’t have to,” he assured. He was now sitting beside me and forcing my face to look in his direction. I smiled when he brushed my blonde hair away from my face.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked as I folded up the newspaper.

“I saw you from across the street. I was just coming out of the Wayne towers when I saw you sitting here alone.” I’d noticed how his words had gradually slowed down and he had quietened, his attention becoming more focused on the newspaper on my lap more than anything. Without asking, he gently picked up the newspaper and unfolded it. His eyes quickly scanned over the paper and became full of concern. When he had finally put the newspaper down, neither of us knew what to say. He didn’t know whether to explain the situation to me and I couldn’t word my question properly.

“About that, um...can you explain? What happened?” I questioned unsurely.

Bruce sighed and rubbed invisible sleep away from his eyes. It was clear that this wasn’t something he wanted to remember and I regretted ever bringing it up. “A few years ago something...happened. This man, this psychopath...he was dangerous. He held a reign over all of Gotham with threats and serious acts of violence. All of Gotham was scared; he killed hundreds. Batman was trying to be the hero. His one rule was to kill no-one and...he broke it. He managed to lock The Joker away but broke his rule in the process. Ever since The Joker has been locked away Batman’s never been seen. Gotham didn’t want their so called hero anymore.”

“This city just gets weirder and weirder every day. Everything’s going to be alright, isn’t it?” I asked, unsure of myself. Having only a second hand view of the story, I shouldn’t be the one to judge.

“Only time can tell.”