[ @yourabattoir ] CLAIRE TEMPLE: what's the use of a voice, if it goes unheard?
there's certain hours where gotham is beautiful. most people would say it's never, that it's grime at all hours. maybe there's beauty at the tops of skyscrapers; most people wouldn't know. maybe it's just because the bat's one of the only people who flies over it but isn't at the distance of a plane. close enough to make out the details. lights on in windows. people making their way home past any decent hour. arguments between friends, picking up children, first kisses.
that's what stretches out below them, at the top of her apartment building. at any point here he could throw himself off, glide just so around a few other skyscrapers, and land with a perfect look at the gotham gazette's building. but he doesn't, not yet.
gotham's a big city. it drowns most people. most individual voices are so small that it doesn't matter. and all the people with power ranging from imagined—the mayor, mostly—and terrifyingly real—the penguin, as a good example—can't hear it.
claire temple works the night shift. she lives in a small apartment, and she keeps to herself. she's good at her job. he only saw a few complaints in the hospital database, and they read more as patients disgruntled about things besides their actual care. he looked after the first time she stitched him up, sitting there under wayne tower, makeup still smeared around his eyes, carefully picking through years of records about temple, claire, night nurse.
he doesn't say much for a few moments.
"guess you have to find the right people to listen." people who can make change, who know the right levers to pull. "not to make it sound like it's easy. it's not. most people don't think gotham can change, unless it's for the worse."
sometimes he even believes it. but the truth is that he knows—if there's no path left for gotham's criminals to improve, where does that leave him? the boy who decided to become a bat?
"you think all of this can get better or not?"