100YoP Chapter Twenty-One "... worse than nothing." (Patreon)

Walking into Farah’s apartment was like stepping inside her brain.

Her door was metal, had a camera on the outside and opened with a buzzing noise a little after I rang the bell. It was far different than all the other doors I’d seen on the way in, and if my eyes didn’t trick me, it was custom-made.

Most of the walls inside were covered in shelves, and those shelves held dozens upon dozens of rigs and what I guessed were probably important computer parts, conneted by black, yellow and red wires—all of which lead to the set up in her room, which barely had space for her bed with all the bookshelfs full of what appeared to be homemade servers.

The sound they all made was almost deafening, even as it failed to bounce off of the soundproof wall panels decorating almost every vertical surface and the roof, and even with the AC on blast in the corner, the whole apartment still felt uncomfortably hot.

There were piles of empty takeout boxes on the kitchen, a couple of roombas charging in the corners—some of them had knives taped onto them—and a rather messy collection of books on engineering and robotics littered every flat surface of the living room, as well as a couple sketchbooks here and there.

The windows all had blackout curtains drawn, though that did little to hide the dust covering almost everything or the muck that covered the dollar store carpet.

Going into her bedroom, there were some LED lights keeping her bedroom barely illuminated through blue lights, and an unbalanced structure of empty energy drink cans stacked all around Farah’s monitor, which shone into her squinting eyes as she typed at impressive speeds.

“... I want you to know I mean no disrespect when I say this,” I said as I stepped into her bedroom. “But damn, bitch! You live like this?”

“At least my apartment isn’t fuckin’ spartan,” she replied, not stopping her typing or looking away from her screen.

“No, it just looks like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo lives here,” I said, idly poking an empty instant ramen cup with my foot, making it roll under the bed.

“Why are you here, Sam?” she asked, frowning and sounding pretty done with my shit.

“I want to talk,” I said, going to sit on her bed. “I know we left things in bad terms and—why is your bed wet.”

“Oh, right, I spilled a thing,” Farah said while I hurriedly stood up and brushed off the back of my pants. “Sorry.”

“... no problem,” I said, making an internal note to talk her into letting me clean her hellhole of an apartment as soon as I weren’t on the platonic doghouse. “The point is, I wanna make things right.”

Her typing didn’t stop, but it slowed down for a couple seconds before it picked up speed again. She didn’t say anything.

I leaned to the side and saw that she was coding something, though I’d be unable to say what it did with a gun to my head. I stood there awkwardly for a moment, then I found a relatively unoccupied spot of wall and leaned against it.

Her typing continued for a while, but every so often it’d slow and she’d look over her shoulder at me. After the third time she did this, she sighed, set the code to compile (I think) and spun around on her red gamer chair.

Her eyes were bloodshot, with dark bags under and her whole body slumped with exhaustion. She looked, in short, like lukewarm shit.

“... you realize that what you did is fucked, right?” she asked me. “I don’t know anyone that doesn’t understand that snitching is asking to get your shit kicked in. It’s the line nobodycrosses, man. There are exceptions, but it’s like... one of the few things that keep things orderly.”

“And I did it.”

“And you did it,” she agreed. “So... I’m gonna need some promises from you.”

“... I’m willing to listen.”

“That’s—” she started, sounding a bit angry, before stopping herself, taking a deep breath and let it out. “... Fine. First of all, no more snitching.”

I frowned. “You realize the whole plan against Namond’s crew—a  plan that you signed off on—involves what’s basically snitching en masse, right?”

“Well— then no snitching without clearing it off with me,” she said. “Billy and Yua will probably just go along with anything you say—” unfortunately accurate “—so I need to know that you’ll hear me when I say something’s too far. You can’t just play fast and lose with the rules of the game and think you won’t get burned.”

I didn’t hesitate to nod. “Easy enough. Keepin’ me in check is your most important job, after all.”

“Wh—it is?”

“That’s what you get for always callin’ me out on my bullshit,” I drawled. “It becomes your job.”

“... huh,” she said. “Well... I also want you to check with me before you pick another fight. Namond turned out to be bigger and better armed than we expected, and I don’t want you to get caught with your pants down again.”

“... I’m open to that,” I nodded. “This whole thing really did turn into a somethin’ of a shitshow.”

“Oh, it went way past ‘somethin’’ of a shitshow,” Farah scoffed. “I still have no clue on how you’re planning to beat Namond without your powers.”

“I’ve been... considering a few options,” I said. “I can fill you in later?”

“... third promise,” she said, instead of answering. “And... and this one is the biggest one.”

“Sure?”

“Some day... not soon, but... in the future... I’m gonna ask you for help with somethin’,” Farah said, looking away from me and scratching at her neck as she thought it over. “It’ll be... dangerous, but it might help the—”

“Is it somethin’ important to you?” I interrupted. “Is it somethin’ you need?”

She blinked, finally looking back at me, before nodding.

“Then it’s done,” I said, unhesitant. “You can tell me the details when you’re ready, and you and me can ride out and deal with it.”

“... just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“... fuck me, it’s hard to be mad at you sometimes,” she scoffed.

“Well... I can make you angry again, if that’d make you feel better.”

“... just out of academic curiosity, what do you have in mind?”

I reached into my pocket, grabbed my keys and tossed them at her. She failed completely to catch them and my aim was way off in the first place, so they smacked into the structure of cans which toppled in a cacophany while she swung to grab it two inches to the left of where they passed as they hit the cans.

Farah blinked, then reached over and grabbed them, before giving me an inquisitive look.

“You look like shit, and your apartment’s a fucking nightmare,” I said. “Billy’s waiting downstairs, tell him to drive you to my place, shower, and go to sleep there while I clean the collection of grime and cyberpunk bullshit you call a home.”

Farah frowned, opened her mouth, stopped frowning, closed her mouth, looked at the empty cans at her feet, looked at her moist mattress, looked at a mysterious brown stain on the ceiling I had previously missed, lifted her arm, smelt her armpit, grimaced, looked at me and nodded.

“Fair enough,” she said.

{[X]}

“... I’ve been checkin’ on your mom,” Alice’s voice called over the phone, her Uptown Gotham accent slipping back into her voice the longer she talked with me. “She’s... well, she’s not fine because she’s worrying herself sick over you, but she’s stable and she seems to be safe.”

I sighed, “That’s almost a relief, I guess. How’re you doin’?”

“Busy, but I’ve been busy for a while so I manage,” she said. “Toymaker rampaged through the city in a giant fuckin’ blow-up doll or somethin’ and we’ve had a couple wounded.”

“God, that guy,” I said. “We had to help a few guys from the Metropolis branch of the goonion because he kept paying them in Barbies.”

“Completely unsurprising,” said Alice. “What about you, Sam? How’re you holdin’ up?”

“Eh, ups and downs,” I shrugged, holding the phone between my shoulder and ear as I reached into my closet and retrieved a comforter stuffed with feathers—probably the second most expensive item in my apartment, outside the guns and ammo. “Had some bad stuff with a friend, but we’re dealing with it, had some good business, had some bad HR problems, had some good developments in a relationship—”

“Oh, you finally got laid again?”

I sputtered, “Wh—how did you—What do you mean finally?”

“Dude, come on,” I didn’t need to be in the same city as Alice to feel that flat expression. “If I know you—and I do—you probably haven’t dated anyone since we broke up, and I know you’re not one for casual stuff.”

“I could’ve done casual stuff,” I grumbled while I splayed out the blanket and put it down over Yua, who was asleep on my couch. Almost immediately after I tucked her in, her limbs uncurled a little from where she’d been shivering, “You don’t know.”

“Well, according to Billy, you haven’t,” she said.

“You’re talking with Billy?” I asked, grabbing the phone again as I turned up my heater a bit. “That’s a surprise, what happened?”

“He just called me, out of the blue. Said he wanted to talk to someone that understood what it was to be around you.”

“What an asshole,” I grumbled, walking into the kitchen.

“I don’t think he meant it as an insult,” she said.

“Oh,” I paused as I was grabbing my favourite mug, “Well, he’s still an asshole so I won’t retract the statement.”

“Fair ‘nuff,” said Alice, “Though really, we’ve been getting along pretty well. I’m not sure why we didn’t before.”

“It’s cause we were datin’ before,” I said, grabbing a tea bag from my pantry and the sugar. “Now he can actually know you as a person instead of as my girlfriend, and I guess he liked the person he saw.”

“Huh.”

There was a moment of silence during which I filled the electric kettle with tap water and set it to heat, while I put some sugar on the mug and the tea bag on top of it.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you break up with me?” she asked. “The real reason.”

I thought it over.

“It was a time when the only thing I felt about my life was a profound feeling of disappointment,” I said, voice falling into a monotone. “I’d finally found the balls to get out of the Blackgaters, and I was dickin’ around with henchman shit instead. I wasn’t killin’ anyone, but I was helpin’ terrorize the city and commiting bizarre, stupid acts of violence for the sake of some masked douchebag or another’s ego. And you wanted me to be better.”

Steam started rising from the spout of the kettle. I kept talking.

“Or rather, you expected me to be better. Genuinely believed I could and would. You were so nice, so determined to graduate early and become a doctor and helppeople. And it came to a point where I couldn’t stand to keep disappointing you. You movin’ out just made the decision easier.”

I watched the water boil and the kettle automatically turn off. I didn’t move a muscle.

Finally, Alice’s voice rang over, “... so basically, you couldn’t get over your own shit?”

I snorted.

“Pretty much,” I chuckled.

“Well... that sucks.”

“I know.”

“Seriously, Sam, that really sucks.”

“I know.”

“We had somethin’ good.”

“We did.”

“It could’ve lasted for way longer.”

“It could have.”

“... thanks for not saying it was my fault.”

“I didn’t because it wasn’t. That’s it.”

I poured the water into my mug and started bobbing the bag. I leaned my head against the pantry.

“... I’ll get the stuff you asked for to you by tomorrow or the day after at the latest,” she said. “But you have to promise me you’ll make it through this. And that you won’t use it unless it’s your only option.”

“I promise.”

“And after that... I wanna have a talk with you about opening something in Gotham.”

I frowned, “Opening what?”

She hung up.

I looked at my phone for a moment, then sighed and put it in my pocket. “Always gotta have the last fuckin’ word.”

I grabbed a teaspoon and pulled out the bag, resting it against the curve of the spoon before wrapping the string around it and using the tag at the end to push out the tea without burning my finger. After throwing away the bag, I put the spoon back in the mug and stirred a bit before taking it back over to the couch and stretching my hand over the back.

Yua’s arm came up and she grabbed the mug from my hand.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said. “Move your legs.”

She curled them under the blanket, and I sat over it, relaxing as she drank her tea.

After a while, I turned my head and asked her, “So why were you sleeping in my apartment, anyways?”

“My apartment was cold.”

“So was this one before I turned on the heater.”

“I know,” she said. Then, after a while, “I’m not sure why I came here.”

“Hm.”

We settled back into silence, her drinking her tea and me wishing I had a TV so I could be watching that instead of tracking the movements of the only fly that survived the fuckin’ Gotham winter—which of course found its way to mygoddamn apartment—across my apartment.

“I was in my apartment,” Yua suddenly said. “It’s a studio, but I felt like the space between the walls was bigger than before. And it was cold.”

“... so you were lonely?” I asked.

“... perhaps,” Yua slowly nodded. “I’ve never been lonely before.”

“Did you have friends before you joined me?” I asked.

“I did not,” she took a sip of her tea. “My family allowed me no peers, and I never saw a need to pursue them when there was always a mission to carry out.”

“And you never wanted someone to accompany you?”

“... perhaps,” she repeated. “But... there was no point in longing if it wasn’t allowed.”

“And now?”

“... now there’s no one capable or interested in ordering me like they did,” Yua blinked, eyes stuck on her mug. “So I’m letting myself desire.”

“... that’s alright, then.”

My mother once noted, after I came home bruised from a fight with some older kids that had been picking on Billy, that I had a penchant for surrounding myself with underdogs. Alice had said I liked building stuff with the bricks other people discarded. Billy told me I was a sap that kept rushing to pick up kicked dogs.

I just saw it as recognizing that sometimes, my broken parts complemented another’s cracks and breaks.

Jagged edges fit together.

{[X]}

“C’mon, just one more!” I called out, arms ready to catch the bar.

With a grunt of effort and some huffing, Steph’s arms extended and lifted the barbell as far as they could, at which point I took pity on her and took it out of her hands so she could flop tiredly while I racked it.

“Ugh,” she groaned.

“I know, I know,” I said, handing her an energy drink. “Here. Sugar for your soul.”

“I don’t have a soul,” she grumbled, even as she took the bottle from my grip. “I sacrificed it in the name of epic gains.”

I rolled my eyes and started putting away the weights, letting her recuperate energy at her own pace. Almost half the bottle was done by the time everything was racked on the wall.

Honestly, the weights kinda clashed with what little decor I had, but they didn’t look awful.

“So...” Steph said, breaching the silence that’d formed as she caught her breath. “Dog mentioned that things seem to be ramping up. More than they have been, anyways.”

“... they are,” I agreed. “The cops are starting to get their shit together, so I’ll be throwin’ down the gauntlet within the week.”

“You’re actually going to challenge Big Man?”

“Call him Namond, I don’t wanna Voldemort his ass,” I grumbled. “And yeah, I am.”

“Does that seem... wise to you? You’re still depowered.”

“Mm,” I shrugged. “The longer Namond’s allowed to go around doin’ this the more damage he’s goin’ to do.”

“See, I’m having a little trouble with that,” she said. At my inquisitive look, she explained, “You’re the head of a gang, and if the rythmn of expansion you’ve got going on keeps up, you’ll probably end up as big or bigger than Namond’s army.”

“... not untrue,” I agreed, finishing putting away the stuff and motioning for her to move so I could fold the weight bench against the wall. As I did that, she sat on the couch and watched me.

“Right, so how can you say he’s going to do more damage than you? After a certain point, it’ll get to be too big for you to control every aspect, and they will start murdering and dealing drugs in ways you don’t want.”

“Again, not untrue,” I nodded. “But I’m taking measures to avoid that. And besides, that’s not the most damaging thing about his army.”

“Then what is?”

“He’s absorbing other gangs,” I said, wiping my hands and heading to my bedroom, raising my voice so she could still hear me. “Don’t get me wrong, that happens when bosses get caught and gangs dissolve. People either strike out on their own, get caught or join a different gang. Or all three. But he’s trying to absorb every gang.”

I walked out with a change of clothes and dropped it between her and me as I sat with her on the opposite side of the couch. “Think of Gotham like an ecosystem. And like every ecosystem, things are kept in balance because everything wants to eat everything.”

“Eat?”

“It’s a metaphor,” I waved her off. “Dog eats squirrel—gang takes advantage of civilians. Dog gets sick and dies—gang gets the attention of the police and caught. Plants absorb the bacteria chewin’ on the dog—civilians fund and advantage from the police. Dog corpse gets eaten by, I dunno, bears or some shit—other, bigger organizations take from the remnants of the gang. It’s like the circle of life an’ shit.

“What Namond’s aimin’ to do is basically an extinction event. By wiping out the biodiversity of the ecosystem, he creates an enviroment where a single species thrives at the cost of all others. With no competition, the dogs feast on all the prey animals. And sooner or later...”

“They run out of squirrels?” asked Stephanie.

“Not necessarily,” I shrugged. “There’ll always be more rodents to consume. But the biome suffers from it, and eventually that cascades.”

“I’m not sure I buy this,” Steph said.

“Listen, everything and everyone depend on checks and balances,” I gestured vaguely. “Villains are kept in check by the Batfam, and viceversa. Gangs are kept in check by cops, and viceversa. I’m kept in check by my friends, and viceversa. So on and so on.”

“So what’re my checks and balances?”

“You’ll find out in time,” I assured her. “But if you want some advice? Lean into them instead of against them. It’s better to be controlled than not, as long as you keep in mind that no one can really force you to do anything you don’t want to.”

Steph frowned, then after a while asked, “How do they keep you in check?”

“My friends? They call me out on my shit, they tell me if I’m going to far, shit like that.”

Steph leaned her head back, stared at my ceiling, then looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I asked around about the company you keep, you know? And about you.”

“That so?”

“Mm,” she hummed. “You... You never told me you were in the game since you were ten.”

“That’s because I wasn’t.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been in the game since I was eight.”

“... oh.”

“‘s not as bad as it sounds,” I shrugged. “I ain’t had to kill nobody ‘till I was nine, which is a longer grace period than what most get.”

She winced, uncomfortable, before choosing to change the subject. “... and Billy?”

“What about ‘im?”

“Nobody said anything about his childhood, but you mentioned you’ve been friends since forever.”

“True.”

“So... what happened?”

“He didn’t join until he was ten, chasin’ after me like usual,” there was some bitterness as I spoke. “I should’ve stopped him, but... well, I was lonely and I wanted my best friend with me. And for the most part I kept him from doin’ anything to bad. He just managed the counter at a stash house and helped hide the trade of weapons.”

“I mean, I don’t think that’s on you,” Steph tried to reassure me. “You were the same age, and he made his own choices.”

“The fuck he did,” I said, because ‘the fuck we were’ would’ve been too telling. “I knew better. Every damn step of the way, I knew what I was getting myself into, even when I didn’t understand just how fucking far the hole went. But Billy... God, after all the shit he went through, I just let him fall right after me.”

“What shit?” asked Steph, snapping me out of the funk I’d started slipping into.

“Oh, uh... let’s just say he had a bad upbringing. He doesn’t like talking about it.”

“I thought you two came up from the same place.”

“But not the same house. I had my mom, and she raised me right despite my best efforts. But Billy had...”

“Nothing?” guessed Steph.

“He had worse than nothing. And he had me.”

“... I really didn’t read your relationship as paternal,” she commented.

“It’s not, but... I am responsible for him,” I shrugged. “It’s just my role in all this.”

“Like destiny?”

“Like the consequences of my choices and actions,” I shrugged. “I don’t believe that I’m predestined to anything, but I believe in owning up to the way things fall after I tip them over.”

“... that’s big of you,” Steph said. “And before you say it’s not, please remember where we live and how low the standards are.”

“Fair,” I chuckled. Then my smile faded a bit, and I leaned back. I ran a hand through my hair, sighed, and looked at her. “Why’d you ask about my friends?”

“Because... what does it say if all the people keeping you in check are just as criminal as you are?”

“First of all, I am easily the most criminal of all my friends just going from the amount of crimes commited,” I said. “Secondly, not all the people in check are criminals. There’s C—Bats, and there’s my mom, and you—”

“What.”

“What ‘what’?”

“You... I’m keeping you in check?”

“Well, you help,” I shrugged. “And honestly, you don’t do it much, which is refreshing.”

Steph looked completely horrified. “I have a say in when you commit crimes.”

“Huh? Oh, no, not at all. But, you know, you have a say in the morality of my actions.”

“Oh,” she blinked. “Oh my God, that is so much responsability.”

“I mean, I have a bit of my own moral compass, and you’re not the onlyperson I go to—”

“You’ve come to me about this before?”

“I mean, not directly, but I’ve measured your reaction about stuff I told you before and kinda went off of that.”

“Oh God, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Okay, now you’re just being dramatic.”

“Please stop talking.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, which just made her give me a sour look from where she was clutching her head.

“Sorry,” I snorted, “Really, I didn’t want to shock you like this. I didn’t expect such a strong reaction from you.”

She stayed still with her face in her hands for a moment, bent forward, before slowly talking.

“For... for a really long time, I wanted nothing more than for my dad to listen to me,” she muttered, and my grin dropped really quickly. “I thought... if there was the slightest bit of love there, maybe I could get him to... to slow down, at least.”

“... but that never happened.”

“But that never happened,” she agreed. “And now I’m connected to another criminal and I get this sway that I didn’t have before, and... jesus, what does that say about my dad?”

I looked at her for a moment, before standing up, walking into my room, moving aside the gun and box of condoms in my nightstand to grab the tobacco bag I’d repurposed to hold all my cannabis stuff, and going back to sit next to Steph, who was looking at me weird.

“I’m not going to pressure you about it,” I said. “I know that you and Crystal got a history with this sort of shit and I totally understand if you don’t wanna, but let me make a suggestion?”

“... okay?”

“Let’s get high, I’ll make some cookies, and the world might seem slightly less shitty.”

Steph stared at me for a while. Then she shrugged. “Sure. Might as well.”

“No, listen, I’m not giving you your first taste of pot without some enthusiasm. I’m aiming a little higher than consent here.”

She snorted, put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward again as she thought it over. She looked at me. “Sell me on it?”

“Things are gonna seem really funny, the cookies are going to taste even better and I’ll bring out my laptop so we can watch Adventure Time.”

“... will you make cookies even if we don’t get high?”

Well, there went my plan to get high without her. “Sure.”

“Is this stuff strong?”

“Eh... pretty soft-ish, and I’ll make sure you take it easy.”

“... okay,” she nodded. Then she nodded again, more enthusiastically. “Yeah, alright! Let’s do this!”

“Please keep your voice down, your mother will actually kill me if she finds out I’m giving you weed,” I said.

“Right, sorry.”

A few minutes, a lesson in rolling joints and making cookie batter from scratch and a few tentative puffs later, Steph was laying back, staring into the void with puffy red eyes while I put the cookies in the oven.

“Really should’ve factored in your tiny-ass body, huh,” I mused, walking back over. “Steph? Stephanie? You good?”

“... dude,” she said. “My mouth tastes like toast.”

“Yup, okay, she’s gone,” I muttered to my self. Slightly louder, I said, “I’m going to bring you some OJ, you’re going to drink it, and you’re not going to puff until you come back from Pluto, alright?”

“Okay,” she said, throwing up her arm and giving me a thumbs-up.

I got her her glass, forced her to sit up and sat next to her as she drank.

“... I’m sorry your dad wasn’t any good, Steph,” I said.

She finished chugging the glass like a frat boy, burped and shrugged. “Well, what can you do. Dads, right?”

I snorted. “Yeah. Dads.”

“... you’ve never mentioned your dad,” she commented, looking at me as I grabbed the glass out of her slack grip and set it next to the laptop. “You talk a lot about your mom, but not him.”

“That’s ‘cause my bio-dad’s a sack of shit,” I said. “He brought us over from Buenos Aires on empty promises after finding some work here, left when things got good for him and I haven’t seen him since.”

“That sucks,” said Steph, gracefull as ever. “What did he do?”

“I dunno, some real estate junk?” I shrugged. “I was four when he walked.”

“... so you’ve got daddy issues, huh?”

I sputtered, and the first thing to come out of my mouth was, “Look who’s fucking talking!”

I covered my mouth as soon as I realized what I said, but Steph didn’t take offense. On the contrary, she actually burst out laughing, clutching her gut and throwing her head back until she was breathless.

There were tears in her eyes when she stopped, giggles still shaking her body. “Yeah, yeah that’s fair.”

I sighed, leaned back and stared at my ceiling for a moment.

The barest hints of cookie smell were starting to fill my apartment.

“... I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Just... well, I was gonna promise to stop listening to you if it made you uncomfortable, but that feels like the wrong thing to say.”

“Probably is,” she chuckled. Then she fell silent for a while. “... I don’t have a lot of friends.”

I blinked and looked at her, “Really?”

“I know, I’m so charming I should be swimming in admirers desperate for my friendship,” she chuckled. “But nah. I just... I talk too much, I give too many answers, I annoy people, and I guess people could sense there was something going on at home because nobody ever brought up home life more than once around me. And honestly, most people my age are just... boring. What am I going to talk about with someone that doesn’t know what it’s like to find plans to rob a bank next to the dishes dad refused to do?”

I nodded, sympathetic. It was hard to bond with people outside the game once you were in it.

“Between you and Bats, I probably got two friends, and I can tell you only hang with me ‘cause you feel sorry for me,” she raised a hand when I opened my mouth, “Don’t, don’t bullshit me. I know you wouldn’t have given me the time of the day if you hadn’t heard everything with dad.”

I took a deep breath, “... maybe not, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things about you that I like on their own, Stephanie. You’re an easy person to like.”

She rolled her eyes a bit, but a smile appeared on her face.

I sniffed the air and stood up, walking to the kitchen.

“Maybe... maybe I should see this as a sign,” she said, barely loud enough to be heard as I put on oven mitts and opened the door. “If you actually listen to me, maybe I should see it as part of being a hero. Maybe I should focus on keeping you on the straight and narrow along with the actual crimefighting and stuff.”

“I mean...” I said, taking the tray out of the oven and plopping it on the burners, “Sure? If you want? But... can I ask you to do something?”

“Sure,” she said, while I took off a mitt and grabbed a spatula.

“Don’t think of it as a sign, or a duty,” I said, starting to transport cookies to a plate. “This is happening because of us, not some greater force or whatever.”

“I know that,” she huffed while I transported the plate of hot cookies back to the couch. “I’m not saying God is telling me to keep you in check, I’m just saying maybe this is what I should focus on.”

“Then choose to focus on it, if you feel like it,” I said. “But that’s what all this is. Choices. Our choices. I picked you to trust because I like you, you picked me to be your friend for some reason, and now if you want you can choose to be more involved in my choices.”

Steph’s ears got a bit red, and she hurried to grab a cookie and bite it instead of saying anything.

Then she froze in place.

“You just totally burnt your mouth, didn’t you?”

She made a small whimper of pain.

I grabbed her glass and went to get some milk while she breathed to cool down the burning cookie in her mouth, chuckling all the way.

“Who doesn’t use a cooling rack?” she whined, a little later.

“People who want their cookies soon and are willing to suffer, that’s who,” I answered, looking for the show in a streaming site.

Just before I could put in a random early-seasons episode, Steph nudged my foot with her own and said, “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“... do you need me to do something for the big fight against Namond?”

“... you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“... I can think of some stuff later. Now’s the time to relax.”

“... okay.”

{[X]}

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, a video appeared in the personal computers and phones of several high-ranking members of Big Man’s army. Lawrence Reed looked into where the videos might’ve come from, but all he was able to get was a laptop that had been stolen in the middle of a coffee shop.

The video showed the notorious supervillain, Spider, sitting on a white foldable chair in a dark, empty room illuminated only by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling above him.

There is a moment of silence since the video starts, then Spider speaks up. “Namond Little. Also known as Big Man. This is a challenge.

“You’ve made an impressive showing by gathering your little army. Not the sort of thing I’d go for, but I guess that’s why you’re a boss and I’m not.

“My boss and I are making this video to invite you to meet with us at the time, date and location that’s been downloaded into your laptop along with this message. He originally wanted to call it a ‘challenge to end this once and for all’, but I managed to talk him down to a peaceful negotiation.

“Here’s the deal: you meet with him. Alone. No soldiers beyond your three most trusted from you, no soldiers but his three most trusted from him. And you either talk this out or kill each other. Whichever happens first.

“Personally, I believe you’re no man for Gotham. And if you understand it, I get why you might not want to meet him.

“In any case, the invitation stands. See you then.”

The video spread like wildfire amongst the Gotham underground. Unfortunately, it didn’t make its way to mainstream knowledge before the date of the meeting in place.

With his reputation and name on the balance, Namond Little was forced to take his three most trusted lieutenants and go meet him at the Drake Hotel down by the Diamond District, away from the reach of either gang.

What followed was the fight that determined the fate of both organizations.