Batman is a Woman
She’s a Legend (She’s A Toxin in My Lungs)
Looking past the pretty smiles and intricate dresses, there were very few people that the daughter of Thomas and Martha Wayne could be close to.
But she figured it out too late.
Berrie Melrose Wayne only knew what was most precious as it was taken away from her.
Her parents were murdered.
Murdered for a handful of pearls.
A void was created in her life when her parents were taken from her.
The realization that she was alone.
The realization that for all the wealth behind her family’s name, she’d give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant she could have her parents back.
She was left with a butler in a mansion that echoed memories of the dead and the love that she had once been entitled to.
She was left with a fortune that hundreds would murder for in a world that took a child’s word for naught.
And she was a child.
How was a little girl supposed to stand against all of Gotham’s Elite?
She had seen the leering.
She had heard their whisperings.
She was not just a pretty face.
Berrie Melrose Wayne was the Heir of the Wayne Fortune and Company.
She would show them all that she was not to be messed with.
Charming smiles became rare.
Leaving the house became an occasion.
She would not show Gotham her fraying edges.
She would not show anyone the emotion they all pried for.
But Alfred was too close to being family to let her waste away.
It all broke in a mess of tears as she screamed, shouted, hurt.
And he held her.
There was something profound in the silence.
He listened and then held her.
Alfred didn’t ask, didn’t have to ask, what was wrong.
Alfred didn’t try to reassure, or lie and say anything would be alright.
He simply listened and held her.
And when the tears had dried, Alfred had asked the quiet question.
‘Are you willing to keep trying?’
It scared her that she wanted to say no.
It had terrified her.
So she said ‘Yes’ as she held on to the last piece of family she had left.
She couldn’t loose this too.
It didn’t matter if she was terrified of what trying meant, a worse nightmare would always be complete isolation.
Turning to the girl in the mirror, Berrie committed herself to keep trying.
It was an accident, discovering the perfect distraction.
She was attending a gala, surrounded by the finest wealth in Gotham, surrounded by vultures, when she lost her composure.
The man spoke with such vigor that every movement of his jaw made his taupe quiver in its place.
She giggled, breaking the flow of conversation and drawing all of those dangerous eyes toward herself.
It was in that moment that she realized that she could be what they expected to see.
She could be a cute, but clueless, little girl.
It would buy her time.
They wouldn’t expect her to put up a good fight.
For the first time in her life, she was grateful for her smaller size, as she played the part of a nieve little girl.
And as she grew, she shifted from nieve little girl to charming young lady to breath-taking woman.
Of course, that was only half of her life.
The half that the world could see on display on their televisions.
The other half of Berrie’s world was the darker counterpart to her sweet smiles and sugary words.
At night she was a creature of the dark.
Fast, strong, silent, and dangerous.
She was the Dark Knight.
Whispers of the Bat circulated in the shadows amongst the rot and the mold.
They knew her.
There was a fist wrapped around Gotham, and if anyone stepped out of line the Knight of Gotham would know.
If anyone could see both sides of Berrie Melrose Wayne, they’d no doubt be confounded by the stark difference between the socialite Melrose Wayne and the Dark Knight.
The Rose of Gotham was full of smiles and laughter, her placement at the head of Wayne Industries a mistake of fate.
The Dark Knight was efficient and brutal, a dark vein of anger visible in the seams of every scene discovered.
Neither gem of Gotham would kill.
But she wasn’t so foolish as to believe that Gotham didn’t kill.
And as she sat in a circus tent, she watched Gotham take two more souls.
The ground was rich with blood, but only mushrooms ever seemed to grow in this place.
The dead leave behind the living, and Gotham took two parents to leave behind a single boy.
Richard Grayson was an orphan now.
And the hopelessness in the boy’s eyes was only barely buried in loathsome despair.
‘They’re gone.’ The words were choked out and sour.
Berrie had pressed her lips into a firm line as she took in the somber child in front of her. ‘Are you willing to keep going?’ The question tumbled from her lips before she could think to stop them.
The boy shook and trembled, his own Pompeii, choking on ash and burning in fear. ‘Yes.’
Despite it all, Richard Grayson would fight.
And he fought like a spark, leaping from frame to frame, blinding and too breath-taking to look away from.
Berrie had never needed a son.
She had never really considered having children before, not even with Talin.
She had never expected to have a partner to fight along side.
But she would not be taken apart so easily.
Dick knew how to smile, but he could learn to make it his weapon.
Robin knew how to fly, but he could learn to soar.
She did not give Dick anything he didn’t have before.
She gave him a magnifying glass and helped him peer into the man that he could become.
And that man was a wonderful man.
Sometimes she wondered if Alfred ever felt this proud when watching her.
No biological ties, but seeing the best pieces of you help refine a shining gem.
But the terror of her baby bird flying away was impossible to stifle.
It clogged her lungs, tore at her beating heart, and burned in her eyes.
He wanted freedom but she could see the vultures around every corner.
They would kill anything weak enough to bow its head, and Dick Grayson for all his strength was a sensitive boy.
A sensitive man now.
One who loved and bore every emotion with his whole soul, loud and ready to let the world see his vulnerable edges.
And so they fought.
Not with fists.
No, they fought with the most dangerous weapons they had.
Words.
Horrible poisonous words that would haunt her.
Words spoken to her, and words she had spoken in turn.
And when Dick left, the void in her chest grew to fit the space he’d left.
It was her fault again.
And when she broke, and Alfred was the only one left, the question came. ‘Are you willing to learn?’
And the ever quiet ‘Yes’ was broken with tears and all the frayed edges that she couldn’t hide from the man who raised her.
Going out into Gotham alone again made the Dark Knight darker, made the criminals drop harder.
She was losing the Rose to the Knight but there was nothing to do but fall.
And then she stopped.
It was a young girl underneath Berrie’s car.
Several of the tires were missing.
Meeting Jaycee Todd was nothing like meeting Dick Grayson.
Jaycee Todd was a young woman with more fire and anger than Berrie had seen anywhere outside of the mirror.
The girl was so achingly familiar to her that Berrie would have thought she’d hate the girl. But the fondness that engulfed her when Jaycee was there spoke otherwise.
There had never truly been a woman in Berrie’s life after her mother had died, nor any little girl.
And yet, Jaycee was easy to love and to be with.
Berrie wondered privately to herself sometimes if she might have become like her little JayBird if she never had Alfred.
But darker thoughts didn’t belong with Melrose Wayne, the Rose of Gotham was sweet and full of smiles.
So she poured her heart and time into raising her first daughter.
Jaycee thrived in the cave, a threat and a competent fighter.
But Berrie could see the way her fingertips trembled at every movement, her breathing sped up with every glance.
Berrie would come to understand that sometimes love and trust are not the same, not when trust is frail and broken down by life’s every whim.
Because love wasn’t enough to keep any of her children safe.
There was no trust in their bonds and It burned like embers in her chest.
And then Jaycee was dead.
Her little Blue Jay was dead.
She was dead.
The void in her chest grew.
And looking at the shattered mirror, Berrie could taste the iron on her lips as she asked her askew reflection, ‘Are you going to lose yourself?’
The burning ‘yes’ was obvious as more and more criminals were sent to the hospital, Melrose vanished from public view, and Berrie couldn’t count all of the new scars.
Then Tim Drake came charging into her life, demanding she let the boy be Robin.
She outright refused the childish demands.
No one, no one, controlled her.
She didn’t need a child to crutch her every failing.
Not when it was clear the universe was telling her she had no place as a mother.
It didn’t stop the boy from following her on her nightly escapades.
That fact alone was horrifyingly impressive and she knew that the bullheaded boy wouldn’t listen.
His frayed edges spoke of the lonely void that Berrie was all too familiar with.
She couldn’t let herself get sucked into another loss, another heartbreak.
But the boy was so bright, so desperate to help.
It reminded her of Dick when he was a young child.
It reminded her of herself.
Desperate to move, to help.
Nothing ever quite works out the way it’s supposed to.
Tim Drake wore the Robin mantel and wielded it like a shield.