Maybe some secrets should stay buried…

Bruce Wayne entered the room, hobbling on a cane. Blake was startled by how much the once-dashing playboy had changed, but tried not to show it. He looked older and scruffier these days, better suited to retirement than a red-carpet gala. Wearing a rumpled dressing gown and slippers, he made Blake feel overdressed.

The one-time prince of Gotham City did not sit down. Blake wondered how he had injured his leg.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Wayne asked.

Blake got straight to the point.

“Commissioner Gordon’s been shot.”

“I’m sorry to hear that—”

“He chased some gunmen down into the sewers,” Blake elaborated, cutting him off. “When I pulled him out, he was babbling about an underground army and a masked man called Bane.”

Wayne maintained a neutral expression.

“Shouldn’t you be telling this to your superior officers?”

“I did,” Blake admitted. “One of them asked if he also saw any giant alligators down there.” He shook his head, remembering how Foley and the others had brushed him off, once Gordon was safely delivered to the hospital. Only hours had passed since the commissioner had been shot, but it already felt like ages. They needed to do something!

“He needs you.” Blake took a deep breath before going on. “He needs the Batman.”

There, he thought. I said it.

If Wayne was shocked by his implication, the reclusive billionaire gave no sign of it. He merely chuckled wryly.

“If Commissioner Gordon thinks I’m the Batman, he must be in a bad way—”

“He doesn’t know or care who you are,” Blake said. “But we’ve met before…when I was a kid. At the orphanage.”

Wayne gave him a quizzical look.

“See, my mom died when I was small,” Blake continued. “Car accident, I don’t really remember it. But a couple years later my dad was shot over a gambling debt. I remember that just fine.” He looked into Wayne’s eyes. “Not a lot of people know what that feels like, do they? To be angry, in your bones. People ‘understand,’ foster parents ‘understand’—for a while. Then they expect the angry kid to do what he knows he can never do. To move on, to forget.”

He spat out the word.

“So they stopped understanding and sent the angry kid to a boys’ home, St. Swithin’s. Used to be funded by the Wayne Foundation.” Blake paused to let that register. “See, I figured it out too late. You have to hide the anger. Practice smiling in the mirror, like putting on a mask.” The words—and memories—tumbled out of him. “You showed up one day in a cool car, pretty girl on your arm. Bruce Wayne, billionaire orphan. We made up stories about you. Legends. The other boys’ stories were just that. But when I saw you I knew who you really were.

“I’d seen that look on your face. That mask. Same one I taught myself.”

Blake stopped. He wasn’t sure what else there was to say. He waited for Wayne to respond, to deny or confirm, but the other man just stood there silently, looking lost in thought. The young cop wondered what was going through his mind.