A/N: Takes place after R.I.P. if Final Crisis didn’t happen.

“Strangers”

They were strangers.

Dark trench coats matched exactly as they flapped in the gentle wind, revealing the Armani suits underneath. The younger wore no suit jacket, his collar open, his tie loose. His raven hair no brush could straighten. The other wore his double-breasted suit closed, his tie so tight it choked him, and his hair no gel could mess.

The salty, Barcelonan breeze teased their hair, whipping their jackets about their bodies. The windy, narrow streets jammed the crowds together, and the strangers—they never even glanced at each other as they passed. They never acknowledge the other’s presence, never made the briefest of eye contact.

Each felt the gentlest of tugs in their pockets, but that was all.

One was on a plane to Gotham the hour later under an alias, another in a rental car heading toward France.

The younger didn’t reach into trench coat until he sat in a chair too large for him, the older in an unfamiliar hotel room.

“Futile. Stop,” the older had written.

“Never,” the younger had written, followed by the note, “Tim’s overworked with the gang war. Two-Face’s splitting my life. Alfred’s dealing and trying to get us to sleep. Gotham’s intact, and it will be here when you get back. So will we, mate, but we miss you, two-thousand times over.”

Thirty days later, they weaved between the anxious crowd in front of the Opera House in Sydney, Australia, never even seeing each other.

They were strangers.

“BG still exists. Too dangerous.”

“If it were, you wouldn’t have come. Beauty’s father never approved of her going to the castle.”

The older laughed as he read it on a boat toward Indonesia. The younger called himself “Beauty.” Only the boy would be so bold.

They didn’t meet at the Kremlin thirty days later. Once the younger crossed the front of it, the back, and every side, he stopped and looked up the turrets and the reflection of the moon upon the gold peaks. In a certain light, the former church almost looked like Wayne Towers, and the younger’s heart ached.

He glanced down at the note he opened in his hand, the one he wrote for the older. “Why do you continue to play this game? We can help. I want to help. Let me, will you? Even Devils have allies. Why shouldn’t Bats?”

Instead, he crumpled up the note and tossed it to the snowy ground before crouching down to write in the white, “Live for today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

Once he finished, he clapped the snow off his leather gloves and stuffed them in his trench coat before walking away. Because he never looked back, he didn’t see the man who bent down and snatched the ball of paper.

Strangers.

With a bandana tied about his head, a sweatshirt tied about his ripped jeans, and a wife-beater tanktop, the younger waited in front of the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. As gangsters laughed by with bummed pants and concealed weapons, the younger finally gave up with an exasperated sigh and threw the note into a garbage can before retreating, defeated, into Mad Dog’s Pub. He plopped onto a stool and ordered a Bud, content to watch the local football teams battling for the Meadowlands.

He didn’t cry, only cringed as the invisible thorns dug into his palm from the roses he would carry to that port every year. He tried to get used to the sucking void in his chest, knowing that this time, Bruce wouldn’t be back. While Bruce was physically alive, he was gone to the world of shadows.

Dr. Hurt had finally won.

A plate clinked against the bar, and the younger drew his elbow back when the bartender pushed the cheeseburger in front of him.

“On the house,” the gruff man said.

The younger eyed him befuddled before he looked down at the burger, and his eyes snagged the napkin. Only three words adorned the white paper, the handwriting horribly familiar.

“Today is good.”

He knew he could have been watched. He knew the older man’s lessons taught him not to give any acknowledgement, but the warm smile refused to be denied. He flipped over the napkin to read “4-5-8-47.”

A case number they’d worked on where they fought Cain in London.

Maybe Hurt hadn’t won after all.

Savoring his burger, the younger waited until the Giants beat the Jets before scratching a message upon the napkin and heading out of the bar.

As he crossed Mulberry Street, a hard force slammed into the younger’s shoulder, and when he raised his head to affront, a mustached man in a pleated 1970s jacket stood before him. “Geez, kid. Watch where yer going, huh?”

The boy narrowed his eyes. “Ah, get off my case, old man. You have friggin’ idea what youse talkin’ ‘bout.”

Matches Malone narrowed his eyes and strode forward to slam his shoulder into the boy’s. “Watch yer back.”

“Can’t,” the boy murmured as the man pushed past him. “I’m too busy watching yours.”

The strangers parted then, the older shaking his head, the younger rubbing his shoulder. It was only later, in his father’s study, that the younger opened the letter stuffed in his pocket, as the older did the same in a parked car at JFK airport.

“Sorry for hitting you,” the younger one read, “but you have no idea where you’re going.”

“Sure I do,” the older man read, “I’m just following your footsteps. Now, don’t be a stranger.”

The older looked down at the boy from atop of Big Ben, his heart tearing as he wrote, “If only I didn’t have to be.”

The End