Chapter Text
Stacy stared down at the body on her slab, shirt cut down the middle and the scissors still in her hand, and tried desperately not to panic. The guy looked young, which was always unfortunate in her line of work, but that wasn't what had set her off. She'd seen younger, as little as she liked to think about that.
He was covered in scars, a tapestry of violence. Gunshot wounds, nasty knife slashes, burns, bruises which had popped up in the way she'd learned to expect them to after death. None of those were all that unusual in Gotham. What was unusual was the glaring red autopsy scar. Not a raw wound, stitched or otherwise, but a fully healed scar. This man had died before, and then been alive again long enough for cuts like that to heal. Months, likely more than a year. And then died again, long enough to end up on her slab.
Fuck.
He could only be a super of some kind, a hero or a villain. Who the hell else in their crazy world ever came back from death like that? How the hell he'd ended up being picked up by a civilian clean-up crew instead of whoever took dead supers away after a disaster like yesterday's.... Well, he wasn't wearing any kind of mask, or obvious super gear. Maybe those had been knocked off by whatever killed him? Washed away in the river?
Or maybe he hadn't been there as a super at all. Maybe he just happened to be in the area when the fighting started, dressed in civvies because he was enjoying a day off? Shit, did his people even know he was missing? Surely they would've found him by now if they did, it had been over 30 hours already, and supers worked fast.
What the hell did she do now? She sure as shit wasn't giving the poor bastard a second autopsy. What if he woke up again? What if he woke up while she was in the middle of cutting him open? Hell fucking no! Even Batman would probably kill her if he woke up like that, and she wouldn't blame him.
This guy wasn't the Bat, she'd seen him swing away from the scene with Robin at his side when the fighting was done. Batman probably knew her John Doe though. It seemed like he knew every single super in existence, heroes and villains alike. And if he didn't, who better to figure out who her possibly-an-immortal was than the world's greatest detective, right? And he could figure out where to keep the guy until he... Woke up.
They should refrigerate him, right? Stacy briefly considered putting Doe in one of her cold drawers, but what if he woke up in there? It was cold and dark and confined, and barely a step up from waking up to a stranger's hands rooting around in his chest cavity. She needed to get this guy out of here. She did not want to deal with him waking up on her. She needed to call someone. She needed Batman. How the hell did she get in contact with Batman??
Stacy took a few steps back, sank into a chair, and dropped the fabric shears. Deep breaths. Slow, steady, count them out, Stacy. She took several moments to talk herself down, until her hands stopped shaking. She couldn't get in contact with Batman, but she did know somebody who could. She fetched her cellphone and dialed the police. Commissioner Gordon would know who to call.
As soon as the call was transferred to the Commissioner's office, and Gordon himself had picked up, Stacy blurted out "I need you and Batman to meet me at the back door to the city morgue in half an hour with a refrigerated truck, no questions asked. It's important, you both really need to see this." Before the poor guy could get a word in edgewise, she hung up.
She panicked, okay? Besides, this wasn't the kind of conversation to have over an unsecured line, right? That was the kind of thing a super would worry about, right? She went back to staring at the dead guy. He was still where she'd left him. God, what if he woke up before his ride got here... ?
She slept in her office sometimes, after late shifts. There was a blanket, and a small cushion she used as a pillow. It wasn't much, but it was probably better than just waking up in a body bag on a metal table. She wasn't physically capable of moving a man that size onto her little sofa, let alone getting him back on the gurney to wheel him out the back door when the cavalry arrived. But she could try to make him comfortable while they waited.
Just in case.