Chapter Text
You and I are friends of empty graves, black air and black, black lungs
Am I the only thing that keeps you safe when the light is gone?
But I still hold out hope that maybe someday
I'll be worth more than all the silence left in my way
Feed me promises, keep my heart well
I'll sing you songs until the darkness does recede
But if in the end I lose my voice
Will you forget about your love for me?
Years ago, back around the time when people started to call them Gotham City (they had many names before this one), the people discovered the sprawling cave system that lay beneath their surface.
As humans do, the first thing they did is begin to scour the natural wonder for anything that could bring them profit. Bringing artificial light into the pure darkness and driving the bats deeper underground.
With their inventions illuminating their path forward, it doesn't take long before they find a vein of coal hidden in the depths where no man was meant to roam. A vein which sparks a whole movement, as soon hundreds of people begin swarming the tunnels like ants.
The miners hacked away at the soft limestone walls, carving new paths through the ground in a much more express and grotesque way than the flowing water that originally eroded the stone. They even brought in explosives smelling of sulfur which would leave gaping wounds in the Earth.
Occasionally the force from these operations would cause the structural integrity of the rock to become compromised, even with all of the wood supports they had driven into the stone in an attempt of stabilization.
Many lives were taken as a result of these events.
Workers were crushed and buried underneath the debris, their blood soaking what was once an untainted paradise.
However, human lives weren't the only ones to be lost.
Once coal was first discovered and people began to flood the underground, they brought with them cages filled with canaries. The vibrant yellow birds were plucked from the skies and trapped all for the purpose of acting as a warning for the humans.
At first, Gotham wasn't sure what the miners wanted with these little birds. Only that their songs were a welcome new addition to the caves among the harsh sounds of the mining.
They had hoped that perhaps that was the purpose of the feathery creatures.
That the birds were simply meant to sooth the overworked miners as they suffered through their long hours of laborious work.
While the conditions weren't ideal for the small animals, they didn't appear to be in any kind of danger, or so it seemed for the first couple of weeks.
When the first canary went silent, Gotham didn't understand. Everything had been carrying on as normal when one of the birds suddenly stopped singing and began to frantically thrash against the walls of its enclosure before dropping dead.
Yellow feathers falling from its corpse, littering the cave floor as the miners began to quickly retreat from the passage. Then one after another, more and more birds began to die as the miners continued to progress further and further below the surface.
As long as Gotham has lived, it didn't take long for them to understand what was going on. Rather than treated as a kind of pet to keep miners calm, the birds were nothing more than tools to ensure that the people stayed alive.
To the miners, it didn't matter how many canaries had to die from carbon monoxide poisoning as long as they were able to continue living.
Sure, most of the birds were treated well prior to their demise. Eventually new cages were even made to resuscitate fallen canaries, but that didn't change the fact that the birds still had to suffer for the profit of man.
It didn't change the fact that the price for money was blood.
Once the poisonous gasses were discovered, they had the option to pull out of the caves completely simply at the cost of their monetary gain. Instead, they chose to sacrifice the lives of the canaries.
Taken against their will and trapped in an environment where they were never meant to be.
Forced to be there simply as a sacrifice to prolong the lives of others who were deemed to be more important.
So, Gotham took pity on the poor creatures, not very dissimilar to themselves, and began to give the birds their blessing.
To provide them a second chance to fill the silent caves with their songs with no danger of being silenced.
And if that caused the miners to wander down corridors filled with carbon monoxide, mistakenly thinking that they were safe due to the canary songs echoing in the cavernous space; then Gotham would say that it's the miners' fault for bringing the birds into that situation in the first place and not paying enough attention to their own canary lying dead in its cage.
After more and more people seemed to disappear into the mines, never to return, they were forced to close down all of the shafts. Abandoning the temptations of the depths due to their own faulty alarm system.
Although, throughout the years some people daring enough to take on the caves in the hopes of profit themselves or just for the adrenaline of an adventure will return with stories of how they swore that they heard canary song emanating from deep within the abandoned mines.
So later when a different kind of bird was brought out of the skies as a result of being used by men, Gotham decided to give that one a second chance as well.
And if some bats happen to wander further than they should as a result, then perhaps some good can come of that as well.