Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Saturday, March 27

The day Eiden realized her new world was fictional was, annoyingly, a pretty normal one.

She still had her name, for one. No weird alternate identity. No cryptic amnesia. Just “Eiden Vidal” written neatly at the top corner of her school files, as if the universe had politely decided to preserve that much.

Her parents were still around, too. Same voices, same faces—just a little richer. Her mom had a Cartier watch now. Her dad drove a sleeker car. Their arguments were softer, more hushed behind closed doors. Money didn’t fix things, but it muffled them.

So for a while, Eiden thought she’d hit some kind of reincarnation jackpot. She hadn’t woken up in a zombie apocalypse. She hadn’t been isekai’d into a medieval war. There were no curses. No gods. No glowing scrolls proclaiming her “the chosen one.”

Just… life. Normal enough.

Until she caught a headline one morning:

“Iceberg Lounge expands into Diamond District. Oswald Cobblepot comments: ‘Purely business.’”

Cobblepot.

She blinked at the name like it had personally insulted her.

Then she saw another:

“Falcone Foundation Donates to Local Shelter.” Carmine Falcone’s smirking photo was inset beside the article, his jaw square, his suit clean.

And something in her stomach sank. Because she knew that name. She knew both names. Too well. Too specifically.

She turned to the local channel and let the news anchors speak while the cold dread bloomed like frost in her chest.

Gotham. She lived in fucking Gotham. Not a Gotham-adjacent place. Not some gritty crime-ridden city with a familiar skyline. No. Full Gotham. Capital G. Home of the sociopaths. She didn’t even need to Moogle (Moogle? Really? That was the best the Author could come up with?) it—though she did, just to suffer. And there it was, plain as anything: the worst city in the DC Universe. Arguably the worst city ever imagined.

Crime Alley. Blackgate. Arkham. The Iceberg Lounge. It was all real. It was all here. And so was she. The only silver lining? Most of the heavy-hitters weren’t around yet. No Joker. No Riddler. No Bane. Not even Batman.

Maroni ran half the docks. The Falcones and Penguin ran the rest. The city was still breathing, if barely.

But she knew the canon. She’d read the comics, seen the shows, watched the films. The city wouldn’t stay quiet for long. Gotham never did.

Some years from now, the Bat would rise, and so would everything else.

Eiden leaned back in her chair and exhaled slowly. A wisp of ash escaped her lips and curled toward the ceiling like incense smoke. “Lucky me,” she muttered.

Eiden wasn’t even a Batman fan.

Sure, she’d watched The Animated Series like every other sentient being with internet access. And she thought the Matt Reeves movie was pretty good—dark, gritty, full of wet concrete and eyeliner. But that was it. She hadn’t written essays about Gotham’s architecture. She didn’t own a Funko Pop. She didn’t quote Joker monologues in high school. Batman was cool, but not her guy.

Her guy was Captain Marvel. Not the women one, although she was pretty cool too. The other one. The one who shouted “SHAZAM!” and turned into a bright-eyed powerhouse in a red suit with a lightning bolt on his chest. There was something so earnest about Fawcett City. So golden and goofy and… safe. Captain Marvel had been pure joy in a world full of gritty angst. She’d loved that.

Which made waking up in Gotham, of all places, feel like a cosmic joke.

Gotham, with its gothic skyline and gang wars and corrupt cops. Gotham, where it rained more often than it didn’t, and where a “quiet night” meant only two muggings on your block.

She had mourned it silently the day her parents announced they were moving there. In this new life, they were just the kind of loaded enough to afford a brownstone in the Narrows, but not enough to live in the clean parts of Metropolis or even cozy Ivy Town. No, they had chosen Gotham.

And Fawcett? Gone. Or so she thought—until something sparked in her mind. Wait. Wait. She squinted at her laptop (Apple iBook, hell yeah!) screen. Was Captain Marvel even around yet? That stupid fanon fact about the time bubble—what was it again? That the Golden Age heroes lived in a pocket of time that never quite synced with the modern world? She had always thought it was nonsense. Fun nonsense, but nonsense.

Then she blinked. “Oh, duh, Eiden. Just Moogle it.”

And so she did. Fawcett City + Captain Marvel. The search results rolled in fast. Grainy photographs, old newspaper scans, grainy headlines:

“MYSTERIOUS BOY HERO SAVES ZOO FROM RUNAWAY TRAIN.”

“BULLET GIRL FOILS BANK ROBBERY IN BROAD DAYLIGHT.”

“CAPTAIN MARVEL STRIKES LIGHTNING AT CITY HALL.”

She clicked through articles from the 1950s, breath catching in her throat. It was real. They were all real. Captain Marvel, Bullet Girl, Spy Smasher—Fawcett City had existed.

But it didn’t anymore. One link led to another. A blog buried in the depths of the web. Fan-maintained. Obsessive. Probably crazy, but maybe right.

“All Fawcett heroes vanished sometime in ’56. No explosion. No fanfare. The city’s decline was fast. Buildings gutted. People relocated. Maps redrawn. Government pretended it was always part of Keystone’s district line. But we remember.”

Eiden sat there for a long moment, mouth dry, fingers frozen above the keyboard.

Fawcett hadn’t just faded. It had been scrubbed.

And that meant something. She didn’t know what, but it lodged in her ribs like a splinter.

A laugh escaped her—low and a little too hollow.

So. To summarize:

• She had died.
  
  
• Reincarnated.
  
  
• Ended up in Gotham of all places.
  
  
• Her favorite hero had existed—but was long gone.
  
  
• And the one place in the world that had made her believe in wonder had disappeared without a trace.
  
  

Cool. Totally normal.

She closed the laptop, leaned back in her chair, and exhaled. Ash drifted from her lips, curling up toward the ceiling like a silent smoke signal. Not a scream, not a cry—just proof that she was still here. Still burning, in her own way.

“Fine,” she whispered to the ash. “Then I’ll be something else.” And in the silence that followed, the city groaned outside. Like it had been listening.

—

Tuesday, March 30

Some days her little (GIGANTIC) discovery, Eiden made toast and tried not to think about how her favorite superhero had been memory-holed by the universe.

It helped that her parents were being aggressively normal. Her mom was already pacing the kitchen in silk pajamas and kitten heels, Bluetooth headset lodged firmly in one ear, saying things like “the closing was supposed to be yesterday, Darren” and “fine, but I want the number in writing.”

Her dad, seated at the kitchen island in his crisp button-down and business socks, was reading the Gotham Gazette like it was still a reputable newspaper. He didn’t look up when he said, “Morning, kiddo.”

Eiden grunted in response and poked at the toaster. The bread came out slightly charred—perfect. She exhaled, annoyed, and a lazy wisp of ash slipped from her lips. She waved it away before anyone could notice.

“Any good news?” she asked, peeling butter over the blackened edges.

He hummed without much enthusiasm. “The Maronis bombed another Falcones front last night. Club out in Burnley. No casualties, but Oswald Cobblepot’s name is all over the retaliation.”

“Cobblepot?” she asked, though she didn’t really need the clarification.

“Yeah, the Penguin. Works with the Falcones now. Smart move, honestly—he’s got the docks, they’ve got the muscle. It’s the Maronis they’re both pissed at. Wouldn’t be surprised if this sparks another trade war.”

Eiden blinked slowly. She loved how her dad talked about mob warfare like it was local politics.

Her mom ended her call with a tight, polite “talk soon” and turned back into the room like a storm cloud shifting tracks. “You’re still going to school, right?”

Eiden considered faking sick—again—but caught the sharp glance her mom threw her way. That woman could smell lies the way bloodhounds smelled fear.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll catch the train.”

“Don’t take the tram through Burnley,” her dad added. “Tensions are high.”

“Right. Westbound it is.”

That seemed to settle things. For now. She packed her bag slowly. The tablet slipped in next to her worn-out notebooks. Still no new updates on Fawcett. No news on where Captain Marvel or Bulletgirl or Spy Smasher had gone. Just silence where brightness used to be.

The ash curled again at the edges of her breath.

She swallowed it. Outside the window, Gotham moved like it always did—like something chewing on its own tongue. A siren passed. A man on the corner shouted at a woman who kept her head down. Her parents didn’t notice. Eiden did. She always did now. She pulled up her hood and left for school. The city, as always, greeted her like an open wound.

—

Wednesday, March 31

The strangest part wasn’t the powers.

It wasn’t waking up in Gotham, or realizing the Falcones were real, or finding out that her childhood hero had been quietly wiped off the map like a discontinued cereal brand.

It was high school. Specifically: being popular in high school.

Eiden still wasn’t used to it. She’d never exactly been “bullied” before, but back in her old life, she was the kind of girl who blended into classroom corners. Two good friends, a stack of library books, and an aggressively ironic sense of humor were all she needed. She was the background character to other people’s drama. Here? Not so much.

Apparently, if you combined reincarnation-level emotional maturity with just enough not-giving-a-shit, you got confidence. And confidence, it turned out, was a goddamn magnet.

But it didn’t mean anything. Not really. Because none of them knew the truth. Not heteachers. Not her parents. Not Livia or Nia or the boy from biology who kept asking if she wanted to study together sometime. They didn’t know that when Eiden exhaled, the air sometimes shimmered with ash. They didn’t know she was living on borrowed time. She laughed in all the right places. She walked through the halls like she belonged there. But inside, she kept her distance.

Because one day, the Maronis might come for the Falcones, and the Falcones would fire back. And someone would bomb the wrong building, and the Penguin would retaliate, and Gotham would spiral like it always did.

Then—eventually—he would come. The Bat, and when he did, Eiden didn’t know if she wanted to be an ally, or a side character.

“Ei?? You there? Earth to Eiden?”

Amelia Banks waved a hand in front of her face, tone sing-song and full of mischief. She leaned across the lunch table, curls bouncing, blue-painted nails tapping rhythmically on her smoothie cup. Amelia was the kind of girl who always had something glittery in her backpack and knew how to talk her way out of any test.

Her father was, hilariously, a bank teller. Eiden still hadn’t decided if the surname was karmic or just lazy world-building.

Eiden blinked. “Oh! Sorry. I… was just thinking about something.”

“Is it about a boy?” Amelia grinned like she already knew the answer. Like it was written all over Eiden’s face.

God. No.

What the fuck.

Absolutely not.

Eiden forced a breath through her nose, fighting the reflexive shudder. Children, all of them. She was a twenty-year-old woman in a teenaged shell. The idea of dating someone who was still struggling with algebra made her want to scrub her brain with bleach.

She laughed, brittle and bright. “No, no. Not anything like that.”

“Awww,” Amelia pouted dramatically. “People are so invested, you know. You’re like, the only popular person who isn’t a) in a relationship or b) interested in one.”

Eiden blinked slowly. “Really?”

“Mmhmm. There’s a spreadsheet going around.”

Eiden blinked again. “A spreadsheet.”

“Yeah, you’re like, in the top three most-shipped. With Noah and Tyler, mostly.”

She stared into the distance like she was trying to will herself into a parallel universe. “Why?”

Amelia shrugged, sipping her smoothie like it was obvious. “Because you’re, like, hot and mysterious and emotionally unavailable. That’s basically catnip.”

Eiden made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. “Yikes.”

“C’mon, you’re not totally against dating, right? I mean, you’re what—fourteen?”

“Fifteen,” Eiden said automatically. (A lie. Kind of. Spiritually, she was pushing twenty-one and bitter about it.)

Amelia raised a brow. “Then you’ve gotta at least like someone. Crushes are, like, required.”

Required. Eiden picked at the edge of her tray and considered how many years she’d aged emotionally since she last had a crush. Romantic feelings were… fine. In theory. But right now? In this timeline? In Gotham? No thanks. “I think I’m allergic,” she said dryly.

Amelia laughed. “You’re so weird.” And just like that, the subject changed. Someone at the next table started gossiping about a sophomore who got caught stealing vodka from his dad’s liquor cabinet. Amelia turned her head like a meerkat and the conversation shifted, fast and shallow as ever.

Eiden sat back in her chair, smiling faintly, her fingers twitching just once beneath the table. She could feel the ash coiling in her lungs again. Not danger. Not fear. Just… the weight of pretending.

Amelia was still mid-rant about how vodka tasted like “perfume mixed with sad decisions” when Eiden tilted her head and asked, casually, “Hey… what do you think about all the turf wars going on right now?”

That stopped her.

Amelia blinked. “Whoa. Mood shift.”

“Sorry,” Eiden said, trying to soften it with a shrug. “Just… y’know. Feels like every other day someone’s getting shot in Burnley or mugged near Tricorner.”

Amelia’s mouth tugged into something between a grimace and a pout. “Yeah, I guess it’s bad. My dad’s super paranoid lately. Makes me text him the second I leave school. Mom won’t even let me go near Coventry. Which sucks, because Coventry has the good boba.”

“Do you ever worry?” Eiden asked, quietly. “Like, that it’ll get worse?”

Amelia hesitated, twirling her straw between her fingers. “I mean… it’s Gotham, right? It’s always been like this. My grandma says the Falcones have been running the city since before she had teeth.”

“And the Penguin?”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “He’s just gross. My cousin worked coat check at the Iceberg Lounge for, like, three weeks before she quit. Said he smells like seafood and formaldehyde.”

Eiden smirked. “That tracks.”

“But seriously,” Amelia said, voice lowering just slightly, “it’s all kinda scary now. There’s been way more shootings since summer started. And everyone’s saying the Maronis are getting desperate. Like they might actually try to blow something up.”

Eiden nodded slowly. “And there’s no one stopping them.”

“Well, the GCPD’s trying—sorta.” Amelia made a face. “But they’re all corrupt. Everyone knows that. Half of them work for the Falcones, the other half are just lazy.”

Eiden didn’t reply.

She stared out the window again, the city skyline clawing at the clouds like it wanted to rise and fall at the same time. Her fingers curled loosely in her lap. She could feel the itch again. The pull.

Amelia nudged her foot under the table. “Why’re you asking, anyway? You thinking of writing a school paper or something?”

Eiden glanced back with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Something like that.”

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Math, gym, a film in history class about postwar reconstruction that no one paid attention to.

But Eiden couldn’t shake the conversation from lunch. Couldn’t shake the words Amelia said so easily—It’s Gotham. It’s always been like this. Like corruption was the weather. Like crime was just another feature of the skyline.

And maybe it was.

But it didn’t have to be.

She stared out the window again during sixth period and watched a black car idle too long by the corner. No one else noticed. No one else ever noticed.

The city was so used to rotting, it forgot how to flinch.

Eiden tapped her pen against her desk and started to make a plan.

She didn’t head home after school.

Instead, she cut through the station near Park Row and ducked down toward the edge of the Narrows—Burnley, more specifically. Her hoodie was up. Her backpack was slung tight to her shoulders. She moved like she had a purpose.

Because she did.

There’d been whispers—on gossip boards, buried in the forums under the usual high school drama. Rumors about a new courier ring working for the Maronis. Fast kids, mostly teenagers, paid under the table to run dirty cash and burner phones across turf lines. No uniforms. Just backpacks and bikes and nothing to tie them back.

She didn’t know exactly where they’d be. But she knew who to look for.

And she found one. A boy about sixteen, hunched over on a green BMX, chatting too quickly with a man in a leather jacket. The man handed him something—slim, flat, probably a phone. Then something bulkier. A wad of cash. The boy nodded, stuffed both in his hoodie, and took off down the street like hell was behind him.

Eiden watched. Tracked. Followed at a distance, her footsteps silent, her body light. She could feel the ash in her throat, already alert. Already restless. She wasn’t going to hurt him. Not if she didn’t have to. He was just a kid. Like her. Like she looked. But she needed to know who he worked for. Where the cash went. How far the Maronis had dug in.

She followed him for four blocks.

And then he ducked into an alley. Eiden crept closer, careful, breath even. She reached the alley’s mouth and paused, waiting for movement.

Instead, she heard the soft click of a safety being turned off. Not the boy. The man in the leather jacket. He was waiting for her.

Eiden cursed under her breath and ducked just in time as a bullet whined past her cheek and embedded into the bricks behind her.

“Who the fuck—?!” the man growled, raising the gun again.

Eiden’s fingers twitched. She exhaled, and the ash came with it—slow at first, then rushing like a tide, thick and gray and choking.

The man coughed, stumbled back, blinded.

Eiden stepped forward. Her eyes were calm. Her mouth full of smoke. “You should’ve stayed in your lane,” she said softly. Then she raised a hand, and the world turned to ash.

Hoooooly shit.

What was she doing?

She stumbled back a step, heart jackhammering in her chest, the alley still thick with ash and adrenaline. The man in the leather jacket lay slumped against the dumpster, coughing, wheezing, eyes red from the storm she’d conjured. Not dead—but not going anywhere soon. She hadn’t even touched him. The ash had done everything. That… should’ve been reassuring. It wasn’t.

Eiden pressed her hand to her chest like it might hold her in place. Her pulse was a snare drum. Her breath came shallow and fast. Her legs felt like cooling wire.

She was no Batman. What the hell had possessed her to follow someone into an alley? To tail a drug runner like she had a badge, or a death wish?

She wasn’t a detective. She wasn’t trained. She had no plan. No backup. No damn cape. Just a hoodie, a temper, and powers she still didn’t fully understand. And no amount of delusion would change that. She could practically hear her old self shouting at her from the beyond.

Congratulations, dumbass. You’re one dead mugger away from your own origin story.

She bent over, hands on her knees, willing the ash to settle back inside her. It clung to the air like regret. Her eyes stung. Her throat burned.

What was I even trying to prove? That she could do something? That she didn’t need to wait for Bruce to grow up and return and save everyone?

She looked down at her hands. They weren’t shaking. That scared her the most. Because it meant some part of her liked it. The fire. The fury. The rush of doing something. But this wasn’t like the stories. There was no clean win. No perfect justice. Just a wheezing man and a terrified kid who had run the second the smoke rose.

She didn’t even know his name. Didn’t stop him. Didn’t track the cash. Didn’t get answers.

She’d reacted. Instinct. Impulse. Emotion. She wiped her face with her sleeve and backed away from the scene. Someone might’ve heard the shot. Someone might’ve called the cops. She couldn’t be here when they came. Not yet. Not like this. She turned and bolted through the back end of the alley, slipping into the dark like she’d never been there at all.

She ran.

And ran.

And ran.

She didn’t stop when the ash settled. Didn’t look back at the alley, or the man she’d left coughing in it. She didn’t stop to wonder if anyone had seen her, if the bullet had grazed her, if the kid on the bike was telling someone everything right now.

She just ran.

Through Burnley’s cracked sidewalks and garbage-slicked alleys, past shuttered shops and too-familiar sirens, past the place where that woman screamed last week and no one had come.

Her legs burned. Her lungs tore at her ribs. Her throat was dry, her eyes stung.

And still—she ran.

She didn’t know how she made it all the way to her neighborhood. To the glossy, sterilized facade of her family’s high-rise building. To the elevator that somehow didn’t judge her even though she was panting like a hunted animal. To the penthouse door, which she shut behind her with shaking fingers.

How did she run that far?

She was just a girl.

A regular human girl.

No superspeed. No enchanted boots. Just Eiden Vidal, ash-breather, high school sophomore, emotional wreck.

She collapsed on the polished marble floor of the hallway, heart still galloping, hoodie soaked through with sweat, palms flat against the cool tile like it might steady her spinning brain.

Adrenaline, she thought dimly. It had to be the adrenaline.

That, or she was going insane.

Or both.

Her hands twitched.

Her breath hitched.

A small wisp of ash escaped her lips and curled on the air like smoke off a blown-out candle.

She stared at it until it vanished, and then, finally, she let herself feel it. The fear. The shame. The stupid, jagged thrill. She’d done something tonight. Something reckless. Something real. Something irreversible.

She couldn’t sit still. Not yet.

The adrenaline had worn off, but the tremble in her fingers hadn’t. The ash was finally gone from her throat, but her thoughts still burned at the edges—too bright, too fast, too much.

So she did what any overwhelmed, emotionally fractured reincarnator in a vigilante crisis spiral would do.

She opened her laptop.

If she couldn’t fix the world, she could at least Google it.

Or Moogle it, as this Earth insisted on calling it.

She pulled the screen close, legs folded under her, hair still damp with sweat. And she typed:

“Gotham superhero history.”

A few clicks in, and there it was.

Alan Scott.

The first Green Lantern. Gotham’s original superhero. Operated in the 1940s. Ring powered by literal magic, weakness to wood (which was still hilarious, no matter how many timelines she lived through). Long before Batman. Long before masks were tactical or grim.

That surprised her.

She’d always assumed Bruce was the starting line. The blueprint. But no—Gotham had ghosts older than the Bat.

She clicked through a few more links, eyes scanning fast. The Crimson Avenger. The Sandman. Early heroes. Most gone. Some forgotten. Gotham had history. Old blood, old bones. Maybe it always had.

Another tab. Another search.

“Current active superheroes, U.S.”

And there—finally—something recent. Something real.

Superman. She stared at the image on the screen. Grainy, but unmistakable. The red and blue. The cape. The curl. Hovering above the Metropolis skyline like a promise.

He was real. Right now. The only one of the Justice League’s founding eight who was actively operating. No Wonder Woman. No Flash. No Aquaman. Just the Boy Scout.

And it shouldn’t have filled her chest the way it did—but it did. Because Superman meant something. Meant safety. Meant hope.

She scrolled down to a headline:

“DAILY PLANET EDITORIAL: WHY THE WORLD NEEDS SUPERMAN MORE THAN EVER.”

Her heart stuttered. The Daily Planet. “Oh my god,” she whispered.

She grabbed her phone, still a little breathless. Hit call. “Hi, Mom? Quick question. Hypothetically—if I asked really, really nicely—how much would it cost to spend a weekend in Metropolis?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Eiden, it’s Wednesday.”

“Right. Just… think about it.”

“Is this about a boy?” No? What the fuck, not everything’s about boys.

“Mom.” Another pause.

“Send me a spreadsheet,” her mom said finally, before hanging up. Eiden grinned to herself. Superman. Maybe the world wasn’t completely doomed after all.

If someone asked her what she did the night after nearly asphyxiating a man in an alley, Eiden would say:

She made a spreadsheet.

It was absurd. Hilarious, even. But somehow, it made sense.

Ash and blood and panic earlier. Now: Excel.

She was still in her hoodie, still sticky with the aftermath of fear and combustion, sitting cross-legged on her bed with lo-fi playing through tinny laptop speakers and five empty mugs scattered across her desk. Half were water. One had Sprite. One might’ve been tea. She wasn’t sure anymore. Her fingers flew over the keyboard like she could outrun the memory of the alley. File Name: Operation Big Blue Weekend

She created tabs.

• Estimated Costs: Train fare, hotel (family-friendly, not creepy), Daily Planet souvenir budget, Metropolis Museum of Natural History just in case she had to pretend it was educational.
  
  
• Packing List: Hoodie (non-scorched), two changes of jeans, brush, backup charger, zero vigilante gear.
  
  
• Talking Points to Convince Mom:
  
   • Cultural enrichment
  
   • Journalism interest (ha)
  
   • “Wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere that doesn’t smell like gunpowder and despair?”
  
  
• Superman Sightings: A growing list of rumored appearances with date, location, and likelihood of being complete crap.
  
  

The last one was color-coded. Of course it was. She even included a column labeled “Odds of Direct Encounter” and gave it a generous 0.3%. Which was optimistic, sure. But a girl could dream.

And she did dream, a little. Between the math and the web clippings and the ridiculous amount of tabs open, she imagined it: Standing across the street from the Daily Planet. Seeing the globe. Maybe hearing a sonic boom in the sky. Maybe feeling, for just one second, like someone out there could handle everything. Could carry the weight without breaking.

She wasn’t delusional. She knew Superman wouldn’t save her. This wasn’t a crossover. He wasn’t going to fly down and tell her she was doing great. But maybe—maybe—being in the same city as someone who stood for something good would remind her that there were still things worth trying for.

—

Thursday, April 1

Eiden woke up with her laptop burning a rectangle of heat into her stomach, the spreadsheet still open and mocking her with a red-highlighted cell:

Souvenir Budget: Too Ambitious.

She groaned.

Of course it was. Even in this new world with richer parents and no rent to pay, the universe still wouldn’t let her have nice things. She rubbed her eyes and shut the laptop, half-wishing she could shut off her brain the same way.

She was tired.

Not just physically—existentially.

One night ago she was a half-shadow in an alley, suffocating a man with her own breath. Now she was supposed to care about math class?

Right.

She forced herself through the morning routine. Clothes, teeth, semi-acceptable hair. Her mom knocked once on her bedroom door, sharp and military, and left a smoothie on the desk like a mission drop.

“Have a productive day” the note read.

Yeah. Sure. That’ll happen.

She made it to school, eventually. The train was late because of course it was—“technical delays,” which in Gotham usually meant someone got stabbed near the turnstiles.

She passed through homeroom half-conscious, scrawled something meaningless on a worksheet, and tried not to think about yesterday.

Tried.

But her brain was still buzzing—Superman, the spreadsheet, the idea that hope might actually exist in physical form, wearing a cape in Metropolis.

What a concept.

She wanted out of Gotham so bad she could taste it. The ash in her mouth wasn’t even from powers this time—it was just resentment.

And that’s when it happened.

Second period. Hallway change. She was halfway to her locker, zoning out like a pro, when she heard it.

A crack.

Not a locker slam.

Not a dropped book.

Something sharper. Meaner.

Then came the voice.

“Didn’t think we’d see you again, huh?”

Her head snapped around.

Three juniors. Big guys. One of them she vaguely recognized—Jerrod something, basketball team, Falcones-adjacent. His dad was rumored to run guns through the East End.

They had a smaller kid pinned near the lockers. First-year. Scared and stiff. The kind of kid who never looked people in the eye.

Eiden stopped walking.

Just froze there, her hand still on the strap of her backpack.

No.

No, no, not now. Not today. I’m not in the mood to be a good person right now.

But the boy flinched again, and something inside her twisted.

Goddamnit.

Why did it always have to be this city?

She stepped forward. Her voice came out low, steady, unfamiliar.

“Hey.”

Jerrod turned.

His smirk was immediate. “You lost, Vidal?”

Say no. Walk away. Be normal. Be selfish. Be safe.

But her mouth moved before she could stop it.

“Just wondering if you’re feeling lucky today.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You’re picking on someone half your size in a school with cameras and five hundred witnesses. So either you’re really brave… or really, really stupid.”

Her heart thudded. Loud. Heavy. Not fear—anticipation.

She was ready to burn. Just say the word.

He opened his mouth. Probably to threaten her.

Then— Brrring! The bell.

The hallway flooded with students, waves of noise and motion swallowing everything.

Jerrod paused. Calculated. Too many eyes now. “Tch. Whatever,” he muttered. “Let’s go.” His friends peeled off with him, and Eiden exhaled slowly. Like defusing a bomb with words. The kid stayed where he was. Still clutching his backpack like it might save his life.

“You okay?” she asked.

He gave a shaky nod.

“You should report it,” she said. “They won’t do anything. But it’ll be on record.”

He squinted at her. “You sound like my mom.”

She cracked a small smile. “She sounds smart.” Man, she loved older women. MILFS all the way.

He shuffled off, disappearing into the current of students.

Eiden stood there for a second longer, staring at the spot where the bullies had been. She expected her hands to be trembling.

They weren’t. No ash this time. No powers. No storm. Just her.

And it still worked. She didn’t feel triumphant. Didn’t feel like a hero. Just… heavy. Because it would happen again. Because Gotham didn’t stop. Because Superman might lift a car and save a city block, but he couldn’t be everywhere. Not here, and maybe—just maybe—that was why she hadn’t left yet.

What the fuck was that?

Eiden turned the corner and kept walking, fast, trying to outpace her own embarrassment. Her footsteps echoed against the locker-lined hallway as the kid she “saved” vanished into the crowd like he’d been digitally erased.

That whole scene? Cringe. Absolute cringe. She replayed it in her head and wanted to crawl into the nearest ceiling tile and never come out. You feeling lucky today? Really? Was she trying to audition for a 90s cop drama? Why didn’t she just say “justice never takes a day off” while she was at it?

Jesus Christ, she groaned internally. One act of minimal intervention and I turn into a bootleg vigilante Barbie.

She reached her locker and slammed it a little harder than necessary, forehead pressing to the cold metal. A few students glanced her way. She ignored them.

That wasn’t how she imagined it would go.

She wasn’t trying to be the hero. She didn’t want to be seen as anything. She just—reacted. And now it was a scene. A whole dramatic beat in someone else’s poorly written high school romcom.

Except this wasn’t some cheesy romcom where everything ended up okay. This was Gotham. Which meant, odds were, Jerrod wouldn’t just forget this. The Falcones didn’t raise kids who walked away quietly.

And her? She’d just made herself a problem. Cool. Real cool, Eiden. Still. She hadn’t used her powers. No ash. No glowing eyes. No melting lockers. Just words. Just attitude. And somehow… it worked.

Which was maybe the worst part. Because now she’d proven to herself that she didn’t need the ash. Didn’t need the shadows. She could stand in a hallway in broad daylight and still make someone pause.

And now that she knew that? There was no going back. She exhaled, slow. This time, no smoke. Just breath.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Amelia. [AMELIA]: heard u told jerrod off! queen shit

Eiden stared at the screen and typed out a reply.

Then deleted it. Then typed again.

[EIDEN]: he’s a tool

She hit send. The next class was science. She didn’t remember what unit they were on. Chemical bonding, maybe. Ironic.

She slung her bag over one shoulder and muttered, “Cue the laugh track.” Then she walked to class like she hadn’t just publicly become the city’s least prepared anti-bullying vigilante.

Science was a blur. The teacher was droning about ionic bonds and cations like the fate of the world hinged on sodium and chlorine making out, and Eiden was doing her best impression of someone who gave a damn. She tapped her pen in perfect four-beat rhythm, just enough to look engaged without attracting attention.

A girl two seats over passed her a note.

“What did you say to Jerrod???”

Eiden didn’t respond. Just stared straight ahead and let the note sit there like a landmine. It was happening again—same as before. The social shift. One moment of friction and now people were looking at her differently. Not badly. Just… with interest. Like she’d evolved from cool-and-quiet to girl-who-might-start-fights.

Great. She didn’t even like most of these people. She checked the clock. Thirty-five minutes left. Of course. Behind her, someone whispered her name, like they weren’t sure if it was okay to say it out loud. She wanted to slam her head against the desk.

Lunch was worse. Amelia slid into the seat across from her in the cafeteria like she was playing a dramatic teen rival in a CW show. “You’re famous,” she announced, biting into her apple like she owned the room.

“God, please don’t,” Eiden muttered, stabbing her fork into a sad-looking salad.

“No seriously,” Amelia said, eyes bright. “Everyone’s talking about you. Jerrod’s all pissy. His ego’s bruised. And someone said you looked him in the eye and smiled like you were gonna kill him.”

“I didn’t smile,” Eiden said. “I grimaced. There’s a difference.”

“Mmm. Hot,” Amelia said, sipping her soda. “Anyway, congrats. You’ve ascended from mysterious to legendary.”

Eiden made a noise halfway between a groan and a prayer for death. She tuned out halfway through the conversation. Something about who was dating who, who might be pregnant (spoiler: no one, but everyone loved speculating), and what the theme for the spring dance might be. Eiden didn’t care. She watched the cafeteria like a hawk. Old habits.

She spotted Jerrod at the other end of the room. Laughing. Loud on purpose. His friends were with him. But his eyes flicked over to her once. Just once. It wasn’t a threat. Not yet.

But it would be. She knew that look. That ego-injured, reputation-saving you humiliated me and I’m pretending it didn’t matter kind of look. Awesome, she thought. Can’t wait for this subplot to escalate.

Sixth period was English.

They were reading Catcher in the Rye, which was ironic because Eiden wanted to yeet Holden Caulfield into the sun. She couldn’t tell if she hated him because he was insufferable or because she could relate a little too much. The teacher asked her a question. She blinked.

“Oh,” she said, straightening in her chair. “I think Holden’s not actually looking for authenticity. He’s just looking for permission to stay angry.”

Silence. Then the teacher nodded. “That’s… insightful.”

Eiden shrugged like she hadn’t just projected her entire mental state onto a fictional boy with a red hunting hat. The bell rang twenty minutes later. Freedom. Almost.

She hit her locker, shoved her books in, and took a moment to breathe. One hand on the metal door. Eyes closed. The hallway was loud. The city outside was louder. She had math homework. A spreadsheet waiting.A name forming on the tip of her tongue.

And somehow, it was only Thursday. Friday, here she comes! “It’s Friday, I’m in love” and all that jazz.

—

By the time Eiden got home, her shoulders ached from holding up the weight of normal all day. The apartment was silent, high above the street noise. Expensive silence. Her mom was still at work; her dad, maybe at some business dinner full of drinks he pretended not to like.

She dropped her bag in the hallway, kicked her shoes off without ceremony, and padded toward her room. No lights. No dinner. No words. Just quiet.

She wanted to scream. Instead, she showered. Let the water hit her face, let it rinse off the cafeteria air and the hallway stares and the sharp little thrill of watching someone back down just because she told them to. Let it scrub off Jerrod’s voice. Amelia’s grin. Her own.

She stepped out, towel-dried her hair, and stood in front of the mirror. Stared. Water clung to her lashes. She didn’t look like a hero. She looked… tired. Her reflection blinked back at her, unsatisfied. “I’m not Batman,” she said aloud, voice flat. No one answered. Good.

Later, she sat curled up on her bed, hoodie wrapped around her again like armor. Her laptop open, spreadsheet minimized. She’d drafted the email to her mom about Metropolis. It was polite. Detailed. Had hyperlinks and three budget options.

She hadn’t sent it. Not yet. She didn’t know why. Or—maybe she did. Because part of her still thought it would be running away. Superman was an idea. A myth that had worked. A symbol that lasted. But she wasn’t a symbol. She was a girl with ash in her lungs and fire in her ribs, and no clean way to let it out.

She reached under her bed and pulled out her old sketchpad. Most pages were blank. One wasn’t. It had a name on it. Written in charcoal,  dark and heavy across the middle of the page. Agni. A name that burned. A name that meant fire, yes. But more than that. Destruction. Purification. Divinity, maybe. It had come to her weeks ago, before the alley. Before the spreadsheet. Before she knew how this story would start. Tonight, it felt… right. “I can’t be like Bruce,” she whispered. “But maybe I can be this.” She touched the page, and this time, when ash stirred in her breath, she didn’t stop it.

—

It was nearly 8:30 when Eiden found her parents in the kitchen.

Her mom was seated at the granite island, cordless landline pressed to one ear, flipping through a magazine with the other. Her dad was at the stove, frowning at a saucepan like it had personally betrayed him. Something tomato-based bubbled aggressively.

The smell was surprisingly decent. Eiden hovered by the doorway like a ghost in socks.

Her mom looked up, held up a finger, then ended the call with a clipped, “We’ll circle back on that Monday. Okay. Thanks.” The phone clicked into its cradle. “You need something?” her mom asked, arching a brow.

Her dad turned from the stove. “Hey, kiddo. Want pasta?”

“Uh,” Eiden said. “In a minute. Can I… pitch something first?”

Both parents looked at her. That alone should’ve been her warning to back out, but she pressed on. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “that we could take a short trip. Just a weekend. To Metropolis.”

Her dad blinked. “Why Metropolis?”

“I mean,” Eiden said, shrugging, “it’s clean. It’s got museums. Art. The Daily Planet building. I think it’d be cool to see it before it becomes a tourist trap.”

Her mom narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “Is this about that Superman guy?”

Eiden blinked. “No! Maybe. Kind of. But also no.”

“That sounded very convincing,” her mom said dryly.

Her dad looked amused. “You’ve never asked to leave the city before. In fact, I don’t think you’ve ever asked for a trip before.”

“It’s not for fun,” Eiden lied. “Well—it is. But also, I just think I need a break. Gotham’s kind of…”

She gestured vaguely toward the window, where sirens echoed faintly in the distance.

“Yeah,” her mom said. “That tracks.”

Her dad stirred the sauce. “So what’s the plan?”

Eiden brightened. “Glad you asked.” She darted back to her room, grabbed the printed spreadsheet she’d prepared on a whim—dot matrix printed, complete with highlights—and slid it across the counter like a tiny business proposal.

Her mom blinked at it. Her dad raised both eyebrows. “You categorized transportation and food?”

“I even gave three hotel options,” Eiden added, pointing. “I also color-coded by distance from the Daily Planet.”

There was a pause. Her mom looked over the sheet again, slower this time. “You really want this?” she asked finally.

Eiden hesitated. Then nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

Her dad smiled faintly. “It’s reasonable. Actually… impressive.”

Her mom tapped her nails against the granite counter. “I’ll talk to the office. Maybe we can swing something next month.”

“Next month?” Eiden echoed.

“It’s not like we can hop on a train tomorrow,” her mom said. “Some of us have jobs, Eiden.”

“Right. Totally. Obviously.” But even as she said it, she smiled. Not wide. Not bright. But real. Because maybe—just maybe—this was happening. Maybe she’d get out, even if just for a weekend.

And maybe—if she was lucky—she’d see the sky split open with color, and remember what it looked like when someone flew.

—

She didn’t plan on building a costume.

Not at first.

She hated the word costume, anyway. It made her think of tights and dumb capes and flashy logos. Theater. Ego. A mask and a catchphrase and a brand deal waiting to happen.

But after that alley—after the man with the gun, after the smoke, after the panic—she realized something.

If she was going to do this, she had to be smart.

She had to be ready. So, one night, long after her parents had gone to bed, she sat on the floor of her room, lights dim, surrounded by open drawers and duffel bags and old gear. The windows were cracked. Gotham’s night air came in, heavy with diesel and the promise of sirens.

She worked in silence. She chose a brown waterproof bomber jacket—thick, padded, no brand. Weather-resistant. Easy to clean.

Waterproof pants, too. Because blood and ash didn’t always wash out. A Kevlar vest, bought secondhand through a sketchy cash-only listing her dad would probably lose his mind over if he ever saw it. She’d paid in rolled-up bills. The man selling it hadn’t asked questions. Then came the knee and elbow pads, the kind used by delivery bikers and amateur skaters. Cheap, but reliable. The kind of protection no one looked twice at.

Steel-toe boots. Already broken in. A beige cap, low-brimmed, pulled down enough to throw her face in shadow.

And finally—ghe mask. A simple black fabric one. Nothing tactical. Just something to cover her nose and mouth, cling to her jaw. It reminded her, horribly, of 2020. Of quarantine. Of standing six feet apart and pretending everything would go back to normal. She touched the edge of it as she tied it behind her ears. Her breath fogged the inside, warm and strange.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cool. There was no cape. No symbol. No armor forged by alien tech or mystical monks. It was just… practical. Efficient. Real. She stood and looked at herself in the mirror. The reflection stared back, faceless and blank, like something pulled from a smoke-filled dream. 

She didn’t leave right away.

She thought she would. Thought she’d pull on the mask, lace up the boots, slip out the window and vanish into the dark like it was instinct. Like she’d been waiting her whole life to go up in flames. But instead, she sat cross-legged on the floor in full gear, back against her bed frame, bomber jacket zipped tight, mask hanging around her neck, and stared at a blank notebook.

She needed to write something. Not a manifesto. Just… rules. Because if she didn’t write them down, she’d forget, and if she forgot, she might die. So she uncapped her pen and started.

RULES FOR AGNI (WORKING TITLE, DO NOT LAUGH)

1. No killing. (Even if they deserve it. Even if it would be easier.)
2. Record everything. Names, faces, places. Keep a log. Patterns matter.
3. Don’t engage without an exit. Alleys are traps. Rooftops are escape routes.
   No capes.  (Yes, I know. Edna Mode was right.)
4. Keep the mask on. Always. Gotham doesn’t forget faces.
5. If cops show up, vanish. Do not be a headline.
6. Don’t try to be Batman. He’s not here yet. I’m not him. I’m not supposed to be.
   
   

She didn’t go out that night. Not yet. Suit on. Mask ready. But she just… couldn’t. The window stayed cracked. The air outside still hissed with Gotham’s usual static—sirens somewhere far, dogs barking closer, the occasional distant pop that might’ve been a car backfiring or a gun.

But Eiden stayed inside, sitting on her bed in full gear, hunched over her clamshell-shaped Apple iBook, screen casting a dull, flickering glow on her maskless face.

It was 1999. Which meant she had no Google Maps, no real-time surveillance feeds, no high-speed broadband. She had Moogle, a spotty dial-up connection, and a Yahoo GeoCities page with blinking red text that may or may not have been made by someone who once sold meth to the Penguin.

Still. She made it work.

Search: “Gotham gang activity 1999”

The pages loaded painfully slow. Like the city itself didn’t want to be known. She clicked through what she could—old newspaper scans, blog forums with usernames like CrimeWatcher69 and StArkHamtruth. Half the sources looked like conspiracy theories. The other half… didn’t.

There were patterns. East End: mostly Falcones. They owned the clubs, the girls, the politicians. Otisburg: a turf tug-of-war. Maronis making pushes. New players showing up. Some names she didn’t recognize—low-level lieutenants trying to carve space before the bigger names showed. The Narrows: no-man’s-land. Abandoned buildings, a few kids running courier routes, too many bodies pulled from the water every week. Cobblepot—Oswald—controlled the Waterfront. The Iceberg Lounge was just the surface. Beneath that, the docks were his. Imports, exports, disappearances.

 She started marking everything down. Not on a real map—those didn’t load. Instead, she printed a scan of Gotham’s district layout and taped it to the wall next to her bed. Then she started pinning sticky notes. Each one had a name. A time. A threat level. Her handwriting was clean. Controlled.

Friday, April 2

By 2:14 a.m., her eyes were red and her iBook was overheating.

She’d logged fifteen incidents from the past week—turf fights, suspected drug runs, disappearances. Most of them uninvestigated. Most of them happening within six miles of her apartment.

She closed the iBook and stared at the map. It didn’t feel like a city anymore. It felt like a battlefield. No Batman. No protection. Just fault lines and fire waiting to start, and her—standing in the middle with nothing but a bomber jacket and a breath that could turn to ash. “Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Tomorrow night.”

Funnily enough, she didn’t go out the next night. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Her suit stayed neatly folded in her closet behind a pile of old hoodies and her barely-used gym uniform. Her notebook remained under her pillow, pages uncreased. The sticky notes on the wall started curling at the edges.

The map turned into wallpaper. Silent. Accusing. You were supposed to go. You said “tomorrow.” It was now Thursday. She was a coward.

No—worse. A fraud. A useless, hoodie-wearing, spreadsheet-making fraud who sat at her window every night and watched the city rot instead of doing anything about it. By midnight, she was lying on the floor of her room in full gear—jacket zipped, mask on the bed beside her, boots half-laced—and just existing. Staring at the ceiling like it might smite her.

It didn’t. Instead, her brain—kind and supportive thing that it was—offered up a helpful little chant: Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She hit herself on the forehead with the flat of her palm. Once. Then again. Harder.

“Stupid,” she whispered, smacking her head again. “You absolute chicken-shit. There are people getting mugged, assaulted, hurt, killed, and you’re sitting here like a stupid goose.”

Another smack. Then another. Because if she couldn’t beat the bad guys, maybe she could just beat the guilt out of herself. She groaned, flopped onto her stomach, and pressed her face into the floor. “You have powers. You have a fucking map. You literally breathe ash. What are you doing? What the hell are you waiting for? A goddamn theme song?”

She didn’t cry. She didn’t get to cry. She hadn’t earned it. Instead, she lay there, cheek pressed to cold tile, feeling like someone had vacuumed out her spine.

The worst part? She knew exactly why she hadn’t gone. Because once she did, once she put on the mask, once she acted—there was no undoing it. Once she became Agni, she wouldn’t be able to go back to pretending to be Eiden, and maybe she wasn’t ready to lose what little normal she had left.

The sun came up.

Eiden didn’t.

She rolled out of bed fifteen minutes before the train and left with her hair tied back, hood up, and thoughts still static from another night of doing nothing.

The suit was still in her closet. The map still on her wall. The guilt still chewing through her ribs like termites.

She rode the train in silence, surrounded by commuters who didn’t care about turf wars or vigilantes or girls with lungs full of ash. They were too busy reading the Gotham Gazette, sipping lukewarm coffee from cracked travel mugs, and pretending the city didn’t scare them anymore.

She envied them a little.

—

School was its usual chaotic blend of boredom and noise.

Amelia cornered her by the lockers. “You’ve been so weird lately.”

“I’m always weird,” Eiden said, spinning the lock without looking at it.

“No, like—extra. You’re broody. You’re not even being sarcastic anymore. That’s like, your whole thing.”

Eiden raised an eyebrow. “Sorry I forgot to bring the clown makeup.”

Amelia huffed. “I’m just saying. You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

She hadn’t. Instead, she’d spent most nights half-suited up, pacing her room, watching the city lights blink through her window like Morse code. Help. Help. Help.

In Lit class, they finished Catcher in the Rye. Eiden underlined a sentence so hard her pen nearly tore through the page:

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

She didn’t know if she agreed. But she felt it.

At lunch, someone threw a ketchup packet at the ceiling just to see if it would stick.

It did. The cafeteria cheered. Eiden stared at her sandwich like it held answers. She sat with the usual crowd. Amelia, Nia, Livia, a boy named Rohan who wore band tees for bands that didn’t exist yet. She smiled when she was supposed to. She nodded. She even pretended to laugh when Livia showed them a page from her slam book where someone had written that she had “the best eyebrows in the sophomore class.”

Eiden took a bite of her sandwich. It tasted like paper and trying.

“Are you going to Nia’s party Saturday?” Amelia asked, poking her with a straw.

Eiden shrugged. “Maybe.”

“You’ve been saying ‘maybe’ for like, a month.”

“Sue me, I like the illusion of freedom.”

Amelia rolled her eyes and moved on.

On the walk home, she passed a payphone. Two boys were fighting over it—loudly. One shoved the other. The other spat something back in Spanish. A man walked by, didn’t look twice.

Eiden kept walking. Hands in her pockets. Breath even. Ash curling in her chest like a warning. She wanted to stop. But she didn’t. She went home.Again.

That night, her mom made pasta. Her dad was late. The TV played a rerun of Seinfeld no one really watched. The news at six talked about another warehouse fire on the docks. Electrical malfunction. Probably. Maybe. Unconfirmed. Eiden ate quietly. Went to her room. Stared at the wall map like it had betrayed her. Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. Maybe.