Dark Knights on Dark Nights
The sky was black as coal; not that you could tell this deep in the canyons of Gotham's streets, walls of glass and steel and stone climbing upwards to compress the the night into a jet ribbon, peppered with the faint charcoal streaks of clouds. Artificial lights cast a strange golden hue across the sidewalks and skyscrapers, transforming buildings that by day seemed pale, grey, and corporate into a dim, shadowy city that felt old beyond it's years. Between them, the narrower side streets and the gaping entrances of hotels and retail stores loomed like ominous caves, casting out a warning to any who might be foolish enough to wander into them.
Not that the main streets of Gotham were much safer: not at night, at any rate. Despite what the politicians and the bureaucrats claimed, this was a city ruled by crime: a place where rules and laws were as flexible and fragile as the paper bills they were bribed away with. Corruption and complacency riddled the city's infrastructure like corrosive decay, and as one journalist for the local tabloids had so elloquently put it, crime was far more organised than the institutions in place to prevent it. Criminals were getting bolder, and the boys in blue were as good as useless to stop the boys in orange, sprung from Blackgate Penitentiary by the mob, and recruited as henchmen by the masked and the made-up psychos who would wreak havoc until someone took the law into their own hands, and delivered them to a padded cell in Arkham.
It was a sad truth, but it wasn't the police or the politicians that kept Gotham safe: it was it's own private army of costumed dark knights.
Through the streets rolled a car as dark as the night, stalking through murk with silent purpose. Tinted windows hid the contents from view, but from within a set of keen eyes stared out at the city with single-minded purpose. Those eyes were far older than the face into which they were set: they were the eyes of a warrior, who had seen far worse than he cared to, and done far worse than he dared to. Oliver Queen glanced at the mirror, a frown tugging at his brow as something he didn't quite recognise stared back.
The car came to a halt, turning a little towards the curb. He drew in a breath, steadying his mind, and mustering his resolve. Fingers closed around the handle, the door swung open and, exhaling slowly, Oliver launched himself into the fray.
* * *
A volley of camera flashes exploded towards him, and Oliver almost recoiled from the barrage of light being thrown in his direction. The crowd that had waited in near-silent anticipation as the limosine approached unleashed a hail of questions, voices clamouring over each other to be heard by Gotham's newest eledgable batchelor acquisition. A practiced smile climbed to his face, as he struck the poses he was expected to, waved at the higher-paid reporters like he was supposed to, and made his way along the red carpet into the five-star hotel and casino that Wayne Enterprises had booked for it's latest fundraiser.
"I owe you a million," Oliver muttered under his breath through pearly whites clenched behind his false smile. "But this makes a million minus one."