Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As a rule, Roy doesn’t lie to himself.

That wasn’t always the case, as events of his life can attest. Running away from home and into the loving arms of a genocidal military complex at seventeen means you’re lying to yourself from sunup to sundown. After the air cleared and self-awareness started to trickle in—aided liberally by Riza—honesty became the name of the game. Internally, of course; over the past thirty years, fewer than ten entirely true things came out of his mouth, but he was clear and correct with himself.

All of which is to say that he is a hundred per cent truthful when he claims he doesn’t remember much about everything that went down. He was—working. Always working, always busy. Ruling Amestris meant tracking thirty different assassination plots, schemes and collusions. How ridiculous, then, that the thing that finally did him in came out of left field. It wasn’t even about him, he’s pretty sure. Some lunatic read one too many conspiracy theories and snapped. Went after Ed. After the children.

Then—Snippets. Stressed out, panicked flashes. Ed, shouting. Trid and Yara, alive. Olivier, wheezing, tiny droplets of blood flying with every laboured breath. Then, even less; pain, fear, shock. Grief. The sequence is too scrambled to be of much use, but he knows he died. Dying is just one of the things you know, apparently.

The confusion feels earned, with that in mind. At that stage of his life, he knows better than to overestimate what he can handle. Run-of-the-mill humans can’t be measured by the yardstick set by Ed and Al Elric. Conversations with Truth should be forgotten, if at all possible. Judging by the snippets he does recall, he was offered choices, he made his bargains—whatever they might have been—and now—

He exhales a long, shuddering breath. Now he’s here, inhabiting a superlative version of his body of some, say, thirty years ago. That’s—an upside, probably. Heavens know people do crazy things for youth. He’s not in chains, he’s not in pain and, to his best recollection, he hasn’t made any binding promises to destroy a peaceful people. So far, so good.

The downsides can be neatly divided into two categories: the practical and the conceptual. The practical are trivial, all things considered. He’s in an evil, green pool, he’s wet and he’s cold. The lake itself is, if his memory is to be believed, some sort of a Philosopher’s Stone. All this can be solved with a measured and controlled application of Fire Alchemy: a little to warm up, a bit more to dry off, and a lot more to evaporate every drop of liquid and blow the chamber behind him sky-high. Easy.

The conceptual issues are more complicated; Roy knows better than to dwell on them. Fortunately, Ishval taught him how to numb his conscious mind and continue moving by inertia. Don’t think about what you’re doing, only focus on the next step. If you hesitate, if you stumble, the demons will catch up. 

***

With one thing and another, Roy never went through proper intel training. Maes and his ilk could be dropped, naked and hysterical, into a crowded city on the far side of the world, and they’d need ten minutes and a couple of discreet murders to blend in. Roy never had the flair, but he had spent enough time around them to pick up a few things. Being a trained alchemist with a skull full of unwelcome yet depressingly true knowledge about this new universe helps, too.

Shock powers him through the first few days. He wanders out of the sewers, transmuting what he needs along the way. Pawn shops become his go-to resource. In Uptown, he creates and sells trinkets: crude jewellery with traces of silver, maybe a cheap stone. As he moves to wealthier areas, he graduates to silver and gold rings. As long as he remembers to be dressed for the neighbourhood, nobody bats an eye. Gotham is full of people who don’t want to leave much in the way of a digital footprint. By the time the inertia fades, Roy has made his way down the Upper East Side and checked into a hotel on the border between the Fashion and Diamond districts.

The hotel management takes cash, asks no questions, and has protocols for men with suitcases filled with crisp bills instead of clothes. Roy’s new body signals “entertainment” rather than “mobster,” but the outcome is materially the same. Nobody pries, Roy rents the suite for a month, then heads upstairs, mind as blank as it had been on day one.

***

The last thing Roy does before shock gleefully hands him over to despair is to use Truth-gifted knowledge to forge an identity. Roy Mustang, high-end escort, age twenty-two. Real name Matsuba Raito, immigrant from China, born in Japan, orphaned at nineteen. It’s easy, too. In Amestris, he’d have had to break into who knows how many places to edit, destroy and plant documents. Here, it’s all digital. He does most of it from his hotel room, transmuting physical documents once he finds examples to copy. Four or five short outings later, he has identity papers, a bank account, proof of higher education, and a premium health insurance plan.

As if to highlight the absurdity of it all, he then proceeds to do nothing at all with all that unearned wealth. It’s not that he trips as falls into it; no, he hurls himself soul-first into the life of a vaguely but undeniably suicidal layabout and doesn’t come up for air.  Why not? What else is there? This world doesn’t have any expectations of him. He was placed here, presumably, to destroy that creepy green pond, and he did that in the first half hour.

You don’t notice the strings that hold you together until they snap. He has no outstanding debts or obligations, and no friends or family members to be accountable to. Gotham already has her champions and villains and doesn’t need him. She hasn’t asked for him and Roy, at this stage in his life, doesn’t have it in him to force himself into other people’s stories. 

Fortunately, there’s no better place for a complicated meltdown than the Diamond District. Rich young men with nowhere to go but down are a dime a dozen here. As long as Roy follows the script, nobody cares, and he e is, in a very real sense, precisely what they expect. Why bother hiding? If there isn’t any purpose to any of it, why not spend his waking moments hopping from one bad decision to the next? It’s not like any of it matters. Why not drink from sunup to sundown and get into bed with women and men and whoever would have him? It feels good, it doesn’t hurt anybody and it manages to distract him from the desolation for whole hours at a time.

One month stretches into two, then three. Around the four-month mark, real life comes knocking . In this case, it’s a man who slips drugs in Roy’s drink, ties him to a bed, and carves him half to death before Batman and Robin burst in.

***

Drugs were one thing, but the only thing keeping Roy from bursting into laughter was the elaborate, cruel and custom-made gag in his mouth.

“You’re safe, sir,” the boy in red and green body armour is saying. “Batman will be done with the perp in a moment or two, and then he’ll cut you free. In the meantime, I’ll just—get you ready for transport. Help out the EMTs a little and all that.”

The banality of the situation is difficult to comprehend, never mind internalise. Roy Mustang, the most feared war alchemist on the continent, the youngest Führer of Amestris, came within minutes of dying at the hands of a sexually dysfunctional, middle-class businessman. He would have been cut into pieces by a self-hating civilian homophobe if not for a songbird-themed teenager and his bat-themed mentor.

“Not much of a talker, hey? Good thinking. Talking always gets me in trouble.”

Suddenly, even the horror show of spikes and leather in his mouth isn’t enough; a laugh bubbles up, bursting around the blood and spit. The boy doesn’t notice, too busy trying to disinfect and close the worst of the cuts down his sides and stomach, but his mentor does.

“Robin. He’s gagged.”

The boy jerks like he’s been slapped, hands freezing, body language so flustered, it’s marched past performative into artful. An Ed Elric variant, then? Ed Elric crossed with Ms Rockbell, with a dash of Havoc for wholesomeness. “Fuck—Whoops, sorry about that, sir. I, uh—”

Roy’s shoulders are shaking, tears beading in his eyes. None of this is really funny, of course. Roy might be a drifting villain past his use-by date, but Collins didn’t know that. As far as Collins knew, Roy was a twenty-something boy who liked to kiss anyone who smiled at him. On the other hand, he’s more alive now than he’s been since—Since he died. And how could you not laugh at that deranged sequence of thoughts?

“You’re going to be alright,” says the hazy, dark figure. The famous Batman, Gotham’s own mythical Dark Knight. “The police are on their way, the perpetrator is secured; I promise he will spend the rest of his life behind bars—”

Yeah? Well, as long as the man with stylised bat ears on his helmet promises—

“Either take the gag off or come help me keep his guts where they should be,” the boy snaps, then grows still, shoulders hunching. “Whoops. Sorry ‘bout that, mister. It’s not that bad at all, I’m just giving the old man a hard time.”

Bless. Just like Ed, if life hadn’t ground him down into a hellpit of guilt-ridden belligerence.

“Scream if you feel you need to, but I would advise against it,” Batman says after a short, deranged pause.

“Jesus Christ, B, don’t threaten the torture victim—Never mind, you’re useless. Come and take over from me. I’ll deal with the gag and the rest.” Robin’s head pops up in his field of vision not a moment later. The blur in his eyes means he can’t distinguish his features as well as he’d like. Curly hair, generous pout. Uneven, sideways smile. Will likely be a heartbreaker in ten million years when he grows up. “Sorry about that, again. He didn’t mean to come across so creepy. Now, sorry, but this is gonna sting a little—”

The boy cuts the straps off his head without pausing the inane chatter. His hands are gentle but the tremble in them is telling. The purpose of the ridiculous two-man show might very well be to put him at ease. If so, it worked. Roy likes to think it would have even if he were a twenty-year-old version of himself who grew up spoiled and not a fifty-year-old war criminal.

“Here, turn your head a bit for me—” The boy’s palm rests on his face a little, tremble growing more pronounced. “And a bit down—Let’s just—Oh.”

Roy tries to put on a sympathetic expression. Indeed, the gag will not be simple to remove. Collins had installed hook-shaped pieces of metal into the ball, designed to cause more damage coming out than coming in.

“Holy mother of—B, I don’t know, maybe we should let the professionals deal with this?”

“You want to give the young man over to the police with that in his mouth?”

“Good point. Yikes. Alright, mister, sorry about this, but B is right, this has to go. Deep breath, on three. One—”

Roy’s mouth fills with blood as the metal drags down his gums and the lining of his cheeks. He barely pays it any mind, focusing instead on the blessed relief of being able to move his jaw. He spends a few moments opening and closing his mouth like a lunatic. He hadn’t even noticed how painful it had gotten.

“Cheers, kid,” he croaks, finally. The boy flinches; go figure. “I mean, thank you, Robin. Batman. I appreciate your hard work.”

“You, uh—” The pain and time are doing their best to clear up the remainder of the drugs from his system. Roy can almost see straight, now. The Batman’s face is mostly covered, between his cowl and his costume. The boy only wears an elegant black mask over his eyes and cheekbones. In comparison, he’s an open book. “Sorry, we hadn’t—Sorry I hadn’t noticed—Uh, here, hold on, let me see what I can do about those cuffs.”

Is he always this charming, or is he pulling out all the stops because Roy looks pathetic? Some combination of the two, most likely.

“You don’t need to rush. I am not in acute danger, and you’ve gone above and beyond already. If you need to leave before the police get here, by all means, feel free.”

The attempt at establishing professional camaraderie crashed before it took off. The boy looks like he’s going to be sick. “We’re not leaving you here, alone, in a hotel—” Robin breaks off, then inhales a long breath. His hands are shaking up to the elbow. Fair enough; this is all pretty shocking. “But thank you for the offer. We’re in Diamond, so the cops will arrive eventually. An hour or two on the outside. We’ve got more than enough time to—To get you comfortable.”

Roy’s face attempts a smile; it’s not an easy task, all things considered. “I don’t know that comfort is on offer, young sir, but your consideration is appreciated.” He tries to arch his head a little to see the cuffs. Relatively cheap steel by the look of it. “As for the cuffs, I would assume Collins would have a key somewhere on his person. He doesn’t seem the type to go for unnecessary work, from context.”

He is freaking the boy out. Fair enough; a civilian in his position would be catatonic or hysterical.  The pain alone would be enough to get him there. Roy could probably play the role if he tried. The problem is, that he can’t summon up the motivation. Why would he pretend? Who for? He doesn’t have any long-term plans, and no public image to maintain. Even the Amestrian persona of a safe, sane, societally acceptable sociopath is too much work.

“B checked him, but—”

“I did a cursory search,” says Batman. Roy swallows an inappropriate huff of laughter. Batman. Gods’ grace, what a ridiculous concept. “If you think he planned to take the cuffs off you at a later point, I will check more thoroughly.”

Roy blinks, a little awed, a lot charmed. Robin’s sigh is sincere and heartfelt. “Your bedside manner is a work of art,” Roy says. “It is a beautiful and wondrous thing.” What must it be like, in his head, that he thought to say that? I assume you would have died in those handcuffs, but I am open to hearing your view on the matter. “That said, you’re the expert. I suppose it’s not out of the question that he’d have cut my arms and legs off instead. I haven’t spent much time with him sans the drugs making a mess of my head, so I really can’t tell one way or the other.”

As if to make himself even more charming, the Batman hesitates, hands not exactly pausing, but growing slow. Like he had encountered something unexpected that he now has to deal with.

Another little observation digs into the back of his mind. The Batman is a bit nuts, too. Something is off, something more meaningful than the surface-level chicanery. Either he’s deliberately blocking his emotions from compromising his thinking, or he was born with them muted to begin with. Either option would be very useful in his line of work. “We won’t hurt you,” the man says slowly. “We’re only here to help. You don’t need to appease or impress us. You can—cry. Shout. You’re safe with us.”

Wow. What happened in your formative years that you don’t realise how deranged that sounds? You don’t need to appease me, honest. Yeah? What’s going to happen to the Batman if Roy does, in fact, freak out and gets smacked for it? Are you going to get reprimanded at work? Will you get a talking to from your department head?

“Consider that I have reasons for staying calm other than trying to impress you, kind sir,” he says. “As shocking as this may be, impressing you hadn’t made it far enough up my list of priorities just yet.”

“You tell ‘im,” Robin says. “Moving on! The cuffs! Key or no key, I should be able to—It’s a straightforward enough lock. I should be—Just about—There—”

Huh. Look at that. While Roy and Batman were sniping at each other, the kid was figuring out how to pick the lock. There is probably a metaphor in there somewhere. A lesson that the universe is trying to convey and isn’t being very subtle about it.

“Your competence is astounding—Ah.” Air leaves his lungs in a whoosh, as a new wave of pain crashes down.

“B! His shoulders are dislocated, leave that be and come help—”

Mercifully, that is about as far as his body can take. He passes out between one moment and the next, feeling strangely at peace under the circumstances.

***

Anywhere else, and a case like his would cause a circus. In Gotham, pretty boys and girls are murdered every ten minutes. Once Roy made it clear he had no particular urge to cooperate with the media machine, they returned the favour and ignored him right back.

It’s unclear what would have happened next, if not for the seemingly random run-in with the Waynes. Roy had been, metaphorically, waiting to die for months. Now that a helpful member of the public had done the legwork necessary to get him that final step of the way, he likely would have followed suit. One look at those familiar cheekbones, sideways smile and improbable shoulders, and something a lot like curiosity finally lights up in his chest.

***

Chapter Text

“—understand that, under these circumstances, most if not all of the evidence will not be admissible in court—Oh, Mister Wayne, I do apologise, but we’re in the middle of an interview—”

Roy blinks back into the here and now. Listening to the police officer explain why his case might be too complicated to prosecute lost all appeal hours ago. The new development, however, shows promise. Entertainment is hard to come by in the miserable little clinic he woke up in, and the chaos of being a victim connected to a Batman-case meant he hadn’t figured out how to negotiate a transfer somewhere nicer, even a week later. 

“I shan’t be a bother, officer. However, I was passing through and thought I might as well stop by and shake the poor boy’s hand. You mustn’t make a fuss, you really mustn’t, I won’t heard of it—”

The grey fog wrapped around Roy’s mind wobbles, shaken by the force of personality. He finds himself sitting up a little, eyes focusing. A man is making his way into Roy’s hospital room. Not just any man. The Prince of Gotham is, somehow, here and is harassing the GPD officers badgering Roy into withdrawing his complaint and not pressing charges in the future. It would, if he understood things correctly, be a burden to the system.

Even terminally depressed extraterrestrial aliens would hear about Brucie Wayne if they spent a week or more in Gotham. The man was everywhere, seeped into the essence of the city down to the bedrock. Roy, who knows a little bit about masks and games, is aware you don’t get results like that if you don’t work hard at it. You don’t get to have as much money or run as many successful NGOs if you are spending all your time fluttering from one stable of supermodels to the next. Being a useless layabout is a full-time occupation, as Roy has so helpfully demonstrated. Wayne’s game of misdirection was not subtle, only played so well that the world hasn’t yet caught up. For an outsider like Roy, it was as plain as day.

“—please, Mister Wayne, I really must insist. You’re welcome to him as soon as we’re finished with our interviews—”

Yeesh. Even Collins was less outrageous about his dehumanising terminology, and he was going to tear his heart out of his chest.

“—honestly. Very well. Susan, come. I need you to make an appointment with Mister Mustang’s lawyers—Where are his lawyers? Have they gone to fetch him lunch? I do sympathise, hospital food being as it is—”

Bless. The officers are properly squirming, now. Roy might not have enough willpower to make them cry himself, but he always has enough in the tank for schadenfreude.

“—be ridiculous, why would I waste everybody’s time? I’ll just give him a call. Hold on—”

One of the officers, a broad-chested, pot-bellied man with bright hair and a deep-sated disgust of foreigners, deviants and young people, sends Roy a hostile look. Roy blinks back, too exhausted to even put on a facade of innocence. Fact is, he’s never spoken to Wayne.

“—My friend, yes. No, no, I’m sure they’re fantastic, it’s just all around a dreadful business, and the poor thing hasn’t had a moment’s rest. Yes. Yes, exactly. I thought—Right? Wouldn’t that just be the most logical solution? I’m so glad you think so, Frankie, I really am. It’s just such a weight off my mind—”

Roy lets his attention scatter, lest he interrupt the production unfolding in front of him. He’s always enjoyed observing competence, and Wayne’s one-man show is irresistible. It wouldn’t work for anyone else, of course, but that’s always the case with such specialised plays. Roy had his version of it in his time. Where Wayne is obscuring the power granted to him by his wealth, heritage and physical presence, Roy had the more ambitious task of getting his audience to disregard the fact that he had the ability and the temperament to burn them to ashes with a click of his fingers. On the whole, he enjoys Wayne’s bloodless version more.

“—saved us all a lot of time. Frankie was kind enough to do me a favour and take on the case himself, so you fine gentlemen can get back to what you were doing before the interruption. In the meantime, I’ll get the sweet young thing transferred over to Thomas Wayne rehab centre—”

Sweet young thing. Bless. Wayne blew right past Roy at his most trite and is cruising through Maes’ territory of absurdity. He doesn’t know, of course, he can’t know how funny this miserable mess is, but that’s alright. The fewer people that are in on the joke, the funnier it becomes.

“—be absurd, I’m sure you can forward whatever paperwork you need to his lawyers. Or simply leave the damn things at the reception, and they will deal with it when they get back with lunch. Susan, could you—Thank you, that’s fantastic. See, another job done: Susan will help coordinate things—”

An interesting dimension of the performance is the fact that, while Wayne was undeniably on Roy’s side—on what he understood to be Roy’s side in any case—he hadn’t once addressed him. The implication of maladaptive egomania is clear enough, and there has to be a reason for it. A performance as complex as this one is deliberate from start to finish, every piece examined, cut to measure and slotted into place. So why, then, was it important that the Prince of Gotham be so cheerfully cruel?

Well, there are many reasons, of course. Cruelty is as big a part of the human experience as compassion or kindness. Not accounting for it would be a rookie mistake, one that would be out of place in such a sophisticated performance. Roy, for one, had integrated several types into his persona, some because they were a true expression of his character that he would otherwise have to spend too much effort hiding, and some because they weren’t, and it paid to scatter false weaknesses as bait. Does Wayne do something similar? Is his penchant for dehumanisation too ingrained to effectively hide or a lure inviting futile attack?

“—beetroot juice?”

He blinks and lets his eyebrows arch. “Pardon?”

It’s not that Wayne’s eyes aren’t focused on him, he just gives the impression of looking through every person in his vicinity. It’s—childish? Roy indulges in a moment of appreciation. Wayne took the concept of a multi-faceted mask and ran with it. On top of the near-perfect blend of masculine and feminine to deceive the eye, he added adolescent to drive it away. Teenagers are exhausting to everyone, including themselves. Seeing a powerful, beautiful man act like a petulant adolescent is off-putting in a new and interesting way.

“Beetroot juice. My trainer swears it’s good for, y’know, anaemia.”

Roy’s lips twitch. “I don’t have anaemia, sir,” he says. “I just lost a lot of blood when I was repeatedly stabbed in the abdomen.”

Wayne waves an airy hand. Roy tracks it with some interest. Size aside, the gestures are elegant and refined. For a long, breathless moment, it reminds him of every single person he’s lost. He sees Riza in the long, well-formed fingers. Pianists' fingers—or a sniper's. Ed and Al are obvious in the energy of the movement, and Olivier in the unthinking, born and bred elegance. The shape and make of them is all Maes, all masculine musculature and bone structure.

He will never see them again. He died. There is no argument, nothing to be done. As much as Truth’s existence might look like there is room for bargaining, nothing could be further from the truth. There is no grey area. There is life and death and Roy wouldn’t believe anyone or anything if they offered a way back.

“Sorry, I was a million miles away,” he says, several seconds too late to come across as anything but deranged. “Distracted without a doubt by all the trauma and the shock of having men I don’t know in my space.”

Wayne’s act doesn’t so much as stutter, but his assistant makes a quiet sound, a discrete huff of air that can count as a gasp, among the professional caste.

“We know each other, actually,” Wayne says, grinning. “You can’t mean to tell me you forgot the night we spent in the Red Panda? Three weeks ago? On Wednesday?”

Hmm. Red Panda is—a restaurant, isn’t it? A cabaret restaurant with—tame gambling? Roulette, blackjack, things like that? Plenty of booze, though, and the waitstaff are all professional sex workers. Roy had felt right at home.

Was Wayne there? He very well might have been; they frequented the same places often enough. They hadn’t spoken, that he’s more sure of. Although—the whole point of going to places like the Red Panda was to get his hands on as much induced euphoria as he could survive.

“Ah. Did we—” Hopefully not. Roy would have liked to have remembered having it with this man—if for no other reason than to see how his outward persona behaves. Acting takes practice; you can predict and assume some things, plan ahead and such, but at the end of the day, you will have to repeat a scene, a gesture, a movement a thousand times to perfect it. Even Roy, who grew up in a brothel and for whom sex was demystified by the time he had finished puberty, made sure to have plenty of practice to apply the theory. Wayne—Who even knows, with him? He might have had enough sex to get in the legwork, as it were, but he doubts it.

“Have mercy, my darling,” Wayne moans, collapsing into a chair so artfully, you almost don’t notice how he barely fits into it, even with his torso angled to the side to make room for his back. “Even the hour we spent playing poker—the hour you spent digging me out of a pit of my own making, then boosting us forward to win the tournament—was enough to make me lose sleep for a week. Don’t tempt me with further dreams.”

Bless. Glimpses of memory float to the surface, champagne-soaked, glittery impressions of laughter and loud music and—Sitting in someone’s lap? Wayne’s? It would have to be him; Roy is on the taller side of what his heritage would allow, so there aren’t that many people who could make him feel small. Wayne was undeniably one of them.

“You bet your boat,” he says. “You would have lost your boat, you absolute ninny.”

For a moment, Wayne’s lips twitch into something sincere, but it could have been a trick of the light. “But I hadn’t, so I must have had a premonition. A stroke of genius. Yes, that must have been what happened, I had made a brave but calculated bet to draw out a far more valuable prize.”

Yeah, the guy’s good. Ridiculous, but that’s a part of the charm. Roy doesn’t doubt that the disregard of his material possessions is, at least, a hundred per cent sincere.

“Ah, I see. It was an obvious strategy, in hindsight.” Now what? Did the lunatic come here to flirt? This place, how are they worse than Amestris—

Wayne twists up, then stands, body straightening—

Roy’s eyes catch on the fluid movement, the rustle of fabric on skin. For a moment, he thinks—It’s lust that’s making me so jumpy, so hyperaware. On second thought, no. Well, not completely. There’s something there. Something that’s making Roy’s animal hindbrain sit up and pay attention. He has good instincts when he chooses to use them, and the same part of his intuition that saw past Maes guileless eyes is telling him to look. What—

“—least I can do is to get you out of this dreadful place—”

It can’t be only that Wayne is more than he appears to be. That much is obvious and, generally speaking, unremarkable. The man hides in plain sight—so what? Anyone who grew up in American celebrity culture would keep as much of themselves for themselves, lest their souls get eaten by their adoring fans. Wayne is not special, except in how well he’s playing the game—

His eyes keep returning to the shoulders, for some reason. Is it their improbable width? Plenty of men exercise, and vanity is hardly a small part of Wayne's outward presentation. The visibly functional strength? Again, just because he does sports—

“Are you done, old man?”

A lifetime of keeping his cards to his chest come to his aid, as the pieces click into place. It’s incredible. Wayne is that good. If the boy hadn’t been impatient, Roy likely would not have made the connection.

Well, well. Doesn’t that put a fascinating new spin on the situation? Gotham’s most famous playboy is also Gotham’s most secretive vigilante. How on earth did he pull that off?

“Don’t be rude, Jay. Come say hello to my friend. He’s had a spot of bother recently.”

Roy takes care to keep his smile cynical. That was a good move. The kid barged in unwisely, and Wayne immediately stepped in to redirect him. Granted, he did it by poking a still-bleeding wound, but Roy is hardly the type to begrudge a little well-applied viciousness. Especially when it’s wielded in the service of protecting a teenager.

“I can see that. Did this one jump from the roof and miss the pool too?”

Smooth enough. Roy will allow it.

“Something like that,” he says. “You must be the Wayne heir. It’s a pleasure, young sir.”

“Nah,” drawls the boy, shoulders slouched, spine angled just-so, loudly signalling just how much it bores him to exist in their presence. It’s fascinating. Roy can see how, in a few years, he could be just as fantastic an actor as his father, but he’s still rough, unpractised. “I’m just the stray he found in the dumpster and dragged home.”

Clever, though. Thinks on his feet. Wayne Jr doesn’t have the training or the experience, but he knows what to do with what he has. In this case, he has the abrasiveness all teenagers are blessed with and the willingness to make people uncomfortable by throwing their privilege in their faces.

“Nonsense,” he says. “One can see the resemblance from a mile away. Must be something in your charming mannerisms.”

Wayne Senior’s expression remains puzzled, vaguely concussed, but Junior’s lips twitch, head ducking to let the messy curls obscure his eyes. Bright blue, he notes. Just like his father’s. Maybe not an adoption, then? He’s been here a bit; he knows there aren’t that many black-haired, blue-eyed men running around.

“Must be. If that’s all? We’ve been here for a thousand years, old man. I’m hungry.”

Bless.

“Oh, very well. God forbid the bottomless pit you call a stomach goes unsatisfied. My dear—”

Wayne twists his way and, now that he knows about it, it seems so obvious. There is savage strength in those hips and shoulders. Carefully calculated posture and effeminate gestures can’t hide the sheer volume of the man. The danger is blatant; Roy knew it from the start, and he fell for it nonetheless. Layers upon layers. Find one secret and be sure it has been left there for you. Bruce Wayne is the Batman, his teenaged son is his sidekick, and all Roy would have to do to ruin them, is whisper a few words in the right ears. Once you see it, it’s impossible to look away. Once you see it, it makes you angry that you were tricked so brazenly. It makes you spiteful and eager to repay the perceived humiliation ten times over.

“—better.”

Roy adjusts his smile a millimetre or two, just to avoid it coming across as frozen. He’s been spacing out more than the usual, in this little back and forth. Fair enough; the months of drugging himself stupid did their damage. And, of course, the terror and the blood loss.

“Oh my goodness me, I didn’t hear a word you said. Word to the wise, Mister Wayne: if you want people to listen attentively, consider reining in your tailor. He will throw together some ill-fitting outfits if you bat those baby blues in his general direction. Gods know you don’t need more to get people to give you anything you want.”

Oh? What’s this? Wayne hadn’t expected objectifying terminology aimed his way? Or just from Roy? Interesting.

“Shoo,” he continues. “You’ve a ravenous beast to appease, remember? I’m sure your assistant can bring me up to speed, and I’ll focus better without the distraction.”

Another slow blink. Wayne doesn’t suspect the truth, but he does suspect something. Fair enough. Roy wasn’t particularly discrete about his about-turn. He doesn’t need to be. The Waynes are the most interesting part of this world, but that doesn’t make them matter.

“Ew. Are you flirting? Actually flirting? What are you, my age? Ew.”

This, too, is a clumsy but earnest attempt at emulating his father. Distract, step into an opening that your mentor had unexpectedly missed. Buy him the time to regroup.

“I do apologise, young master,” he simpers. “Please don’t despair. I am sure there will be plenty of girls and boys your age who will be thrilled to shower you with the attention you require. I am, unfortunately, not that.”

The boy grins, wide and toothy, because he must be contrary on the pain of death. “Not my age or not thrilled to shower me with affection?”

“Either.”

“Gotcha, gotcha. I’m so heartbroken, you’ve no idea. Come on, B, take me home so I can weep in private. I’ll see if I can work up a proper Victorian fit of hysterics. It’s going to be a whole thing. Weekend affair, if I can get Alfie to help out.”

Damn them, Roy thinks, eyes closing. Damn them for being interesting. He was just about injured and exhausted enough to let nature take its course. Now—Now what? More of this? More drugs and booze and strangers’ beds? It’s not worth it. Two people, as charming as they are, can’t be worth it. It’s too much.

Only—

Only he’s interested.

Chapter Text

Roy doesn’t fight the transfer to Thomas and Martha Wayne hospital complex. There is no earthly reason to do so. He won’t die without more specialised medical care, but he could certainly use some. More importantly, refusing free help is for the insane and the feebleminded. The only favours Roy ever let pass by unclaimed were those with political strings attached, and even then, only if he couldn’t cut said strings before, during or after. Whatever guilt complex is driving Wayne to do any of the crazy things he’s doing is none of his business.

And, of course, there is always the petty but well-loved joy he gets from discomforting the GPD officers who, now, have to deal with him.

“Ah, yes, you hadn’t yet met Ms Kohli, have you?” He lets his cat smile widen; the irritation radiating off Detective Byrne and his minions is nectar of the gods. “She’s a marvel. I’m sure things will progress much more smoothly now that she’s here.”

“Indeed. As of this morning, I am Mister Mustang’s legal representative.” Ms Kohli—a solidly middle-aged woman with an air of someone who devoured anything and everything the universe threw her way—nods, the gesture brisk and contained. “How fortunate that you arrived, gentlemen, because I have a few questions about my client’s case—”

Roy relaxes into his pillows. This, too, falls under observing competence. Ms Simran Kohli click-clacked into his hospital room this morning, with her sensible heels and jacket with severe shoulder pads, and he was instantly charmed. When she explained that she is employed by a law firm funded by Wayne Enterprises, who specialise in cases like his, he decided he has to at least live long enough to pay Wayne back for the privilege.

Amestris hadn’t yet grown her lawyer class properly, but they were getting there. Roy spent an untold amount of money, pain and blood pushing a constitution and a sensible system of laws down the throats of the aristocrats and industrialists that made up the Amestrian upper class. The fact that every one of their neighbours was centuries ahead in this was of no help, since Amestris, the youngest and craziest member of the continent, never needed much except her steel and her alchemists. Roy had to employ every ounce of political capital he and his allies had, including Ed and Al’s Xingian connections, and it still took fifteen years to get the project off the ground. If things were different, he’d be witnessing the first batch of the students graduate.

“—and, of course, my team and I will need a copy of all documents relating to the case afterwards—incident reports, chain-of-custody logs, and any forensics you’ve obtained—” 

Delightful. Simply marvellous. If someone tried to bully a military officer like this, back under Bradley’s rule, they would be shot and fed to the pigs within the hour. Things improved a little after Roy and Olivier took over, but only so much.

“—full legal name? I understand you’re from Japan?” Roy blinks and refocuses on the conversation. This one is aimed his way. “In fact, why not walk me through your background again, just so I’m sure I got everything right.”

Roy’s lips want to smile, so he lets them. If this is some sort of shaming manoeuvre, it’s hardly effective. While it’s not impossible to shame Roy into good behaviour, these flower children couldn’t even fathom how high the bar is. Consensual promiscuity that leaves everyone alive and in good health is, as far as he can see, the least violent way a man like Roy can spend his time.

“I was born Raito Matsuba to a Japanese father and Chinese mother. We moved back to China when I was young. They died in a fire three years ago, and I spent the time between then and moving to Gotham moving around China. I came here some four months ago.”

“So far, so good. I see you are here on an artist visa?”

Bless. “G-P-1 Artist and Performer visa, I believe. I am an escort specialising in high-end clientele. Registered with the ASC; all my permits and licences are appropriately obtained and filed.” They better be; he only made them the other month. “I’m registered with the DOR, of course, and my estimated revenue tax is paid off for the year. Just in case.” He twitches his shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I’m not very good at remembering deadlines, you see; it’s best that all these matters are done in advance.”

Truthfully, their tax system is a fascinating beast. Even at his lowest, Roy spent several hours delighting in the sprawling, complex mess of laws, rules and regulations that grew into such might that only the very wealthiest dared trifle with it. In another life, he’d have gleefully spent decades studying its ins and outs.

“Do you have copies of those documents?”

Roy smiles at the man; it’s one of his less practised, sincere ones. The peons he spoke to before were dull, but the detective is an interesting man. He’s not an active antagonist; he doesn’t think, but he is something. The animosity towards Roy is sincere, but so is his grudging determination to get to the bottom of this. Granted, the animosity is making him unnecessarily aggressive to the victim of a spiritedly attempted murder, but that’s neither here nor there.

“I don’t have them with me, no. I don’t typically carry my immigration papers with me when I go out, and I have been in the hospital since our—which is to say, Mister Collins and mine—encounter.”

“I will be more than happy to forward you any documents you request,” Ms Kohli says. “I do so like having a paper trail of these things.”

“I’m just trying to get the full picture, ma’am. Mister Matsuba’s—” The name gains a new life in his mouth: Ma-eeh-tsou-baeh. Fascinating. “—background may provide valuable context, or it may not. I won’t know until I have all the information.”

Yeah, maybe. Or you’re reminding the young hooker that he’s on thin ground, in terms of his immigration status, and that the last thing he needs is a messy court case against a local. A wealthy local.

“I understand,” Roy says, possibly to the displeasure of his attorney. He can’t help it, this is getting interesting. Detective Bryne is providing fascinating insight into the cognitive dissonance it takes to be a relatively high-ranking police officer in Gotham. A corrupt police force is nothing new; Roy dealt with his by feeding them to Olivier and rebuilding from scratch. Here—He has no idea how things work here. How they possibly could. “If it helps, I hadn’t taken Mister Collins on as a client. I haven’t had any clients since I came to Gotham, in fact.”

The detective’s eyebrows arch. “My reports of your behaviour and movements in the past months indicate otherwise.”

Do they? Is Bruce Wayne a prostitute too, then? Or any of the other hundreds of lost souls desperately wasting away in clubs and casinos?

“Ah, I believe we’ve fallen afoul of a humorous misconception, Detective.” Don’t laugh. “I am quite independently wealthy. I hadn’t felt like working since arriving in Gotham. Every intimate encounter I have had was by choice, not for payment.”

Roy tracks the discrete play of emotion on the Detective’s face. Again, the man surprises him. He’d have thought the man would be enraged, but no. He’s irritated, annoyed and vaguely disgusted, but he’s impressed, too. Grudgingly, reluctantly, yes, but it’s there now, and it hadn’t been a minute ago.

“Mister Collins alleges that the scene was arranged, negotiated and paid for. He further claims that your more substantial injuries were inflicted during the attack by the vigilante that goes by the name of Batman. He denies any conscious awareness of having inflicted them himself.”

Ms Kohli makes a quiet, bland sound. “That wasn’t a question, Mister Mustang; you need not answer.”

Fair enough. Still. “I don’t mind re-iterating my statement, since mine and Mister Collins' recollection of events differs so much.” It says a lot about how flimsy your defence is, that a man like Detective Byrne is fed up with it and you. “Mister Collins spiked my drink, carried me to a hotel room, cuffed, gagged, and set about murdering me. Batman and Robin caught him, as it were, red-handed.” He cracks himself up sometimes; he really does. “All of which is to say that money most certainly hadn’t changed hands. I hadn’t spoken to Mister Collins. I’m sad to say that he hadn’t even bought me the drink he had so rudely contaminated with Rohypnol.”

There, got you! That was a smile. Quickly aborted and soaked with exasperation, but a victory nonetheless. Gothamites, it appears, value a show of strength wherever they find it. Setting aside the fact that nobody should expect strength from a man who was a hop and a skip away from being tortured to death the other day, it’s a familiar mindset. Olivier is the obvious suspect in terms of similarity, but so are Al and Ed. They hid it better and had a robust moral code to correct for the missteps their instincts would lead them into, but the starting point is the same. For some people, respect is inescapably tied to violence. It doesn’t matter how much weight you have to throw around, as long as you’re willing to throw all of it, every time, to the bitter end.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid I must press you for further details,” he says. “Namely, no witnesses have come forward to confirm either side of the story. One would think that there should be plenty of people able and willing to testify. The initial encounter happened in public, had it not?”

Bless. “Very public, yes. The booths in the Cobalt Lounge; I believe they are set on somewhat raised daises, funnily enough.” Now, how to play this? He could take the exhausting route of identifying everyone he can remember from the party. They won’t appreciate it, of course. The Cobalt Lounge is a cocktail bar, not a sex club. The venue operates lives and dies with its polite fiction of anonymity. “With that said, I am not very comfortable with dragging other people into this mess. The people I spent intimate time with hadn’t hired me or consented to having their private information shared—even if I had identifying information, which I most often don’t. Preserving anonymity is common practise in these establishments—a practise I benefit from personally and, in the future, financially.”

Ms Kohli clears her throat, clicking her pen to her binder. “Moreover, my client is not responsible for securing evidence for the state,” she says. “He is the victim of a crime, not a suspect. That he has been cooperative with the investigation is to his credit, but I have advised him that he need not do any such thing.”

“It is in everybody’s best interests that justice is served,” the detective says, voice retreating into boredom. Yeah, no. As lovely as she is, Ms Kohli isn’t playing this as she should. Or, rather, she’s playing it exactly as she should if her client was a traumatised wreck. As things are, nobody here can take advantage of Roy, certainly not a dirty cop. “And without witnesses, all we have are two conflicting personal accounts.”

“And the circumstantial evidence, surveillance footage of the club and the hotel, the forensic evidence of the crime—”

“And, one would assume, whatever you found in Mister Collins’ apartment,” Roy says, jumping in before the two properly get into it and he passes out from boredom. “Or workshop, or whatever space he uses to make the fascinating little things he uses. I am not an expert, of course—” Or is he? He’s a hooker, technically. “—But I have some practical experience with gags and such instruments. I’ve not yet seen barbed steel hooks drilled into the ball. That is not an erotic implement one can purchase in a shop, no matter how specialised.”

“Ah, yes,” the detective says, lips thinning with discomfort. “The device is—significant, but I am not certain if it’s enough to carry the case. Not when the attorney for Mister Collins demands that it is no more unusual than any other device used in such niche, pre-arranged encounters. He said, and I quote, that it is a part of the fantasy.”

“Of Mister Collins’ fantasy, certainly,” Roy can’t help but say. “Only, other parts of the same fantasy include butchering young men that he is attracted to because they are to blame for his sexual dysfunction or his distasteful relationship with his mother or whatever inescapably dull reason he came up with.”

Byrne is quiet for a long beat. Roy can see him swallowing down a bark of laughter. “Well—I think we just about have what we came for. Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Matsuba. One more question before we leave. Would you be willing to take the stand? To testify in court?”

Roy sends a look at Ms Kohli. When he doesn’t get anything except an ambivalent shrug in return, he sighs. “I wouldn’t mind, as such. It’s—” He sighs again. “It’s probably best I do. A case like this might very well hinge on direct victim testimony.” Ugh. Dull, dull, dull. “I don’t suppose he’s inclined to confess?”

“I’m afraid that confessions aren’t admissible in cases involving the Batman.” Byrne rolls his shoulders in a wonderful what-can-you-do gesture. “People will confess to most anything if the alternative is a lunatic coming to break every bone in your body, no matter where you hide.”

Okay, now that is interesting. No confessions? No wonder their system is as overwhelmed as it is. 

“And no sign of a plea deal?”

Detective Bryne shrugs again. “I can put you in touch with DA Moore if you want, but it doesn’t look likely. I’m not the one who makes that call, and thank the Almighty for that, but I suspect Mister Collins assumed you would decide it’s not in your best interest to get involved in the process. Without you, there is no case; I would be shocked if the state bothered to press charges.”

Yes, well, that’s great, only Roy is not Homo sapiens except in most banal sense, so he doesn’t have much obligation to human culture and society. If the state lets Collins go, Roy will track him down and incinerate him so thoroughly that there would be less than a teaspoon of ash left behind.

On the other hand—he does sort of owe it to Wayne. He went through considerable effort to save Roy, a man he doesn’t know from Adam, and even checked up on him while wearing his more vulnerable skin. So. Fact: Roy owes Bruce Wayne. Fact: The debt between them is not insignificant. Fact: Bruce Wayne loves this wretched city, for some reason. Conclusion: It might just be that doing his civic duty is the only currency he would accept in return for services rendered.

“Fine. Fine.” He exhales a long, calming breath. It doesn’t help centre him much, but he wasn’t expecting a miracle. “By all means, subject me to the ridiculous dog and pony show. If it must be done, I’ll get it done.”

“I don’t doubt you will.” The Detective’s contained little smile is so soaked with schadenfreude that Roy is impressed. The man despises Roy and all he stands for, but Collins tried to be a big, powerful man, he lost, and now he’s making it everyone else’s problem. Detective Bryne will gladly set aside his objections of Roy, in other words, if it will mean watching Collins get humiliated. “That’s a wrap, I think. A most productive interview, I must say. Have a good recovery, Mister Matsuba, and I hope to see you soon in court. According to the grapevine, the accused plans to demand a speedy trial.”

Ugh.

***

“I feel like I should point out that you have no reason to bend over backwards for the state,” Ms Kahli says after the officers are gone. “Most of the levers of control they habitually use don’t apply to you. You can afford to sustain yourself throughout the case, your immigration documents are immaculate, and your case is as clear-cut as anyone could hope, whatever nonsense they might try to imply.”

Yes, well.

“The GPD can go jump in a well,” he says. “I’m not going to spend my time, my nerves and my energy because of the state. Bruce Wayne, however, helped me for no reason other than he could. I owe him.”

The silence, this time, is more surprised. “Mister Mustang, I can say with complete honesty that Mister Wayne would never ask you to put yourself through something as big as this, for his sake.”

Oh, he wouldn’t? Shocking. And here he was, thinking that a man who plays a never-ending game of villain-chicken with himself just so he can see when he would lose would be pragmatic about what he asks of others.

“Wayne won’t ask anything of me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe him. Allowing people to forgive debts that can’t be forgiven is one of the reasons you people live like this—” Calm down. She didn’t do anything except her job, and better than she was obligated to. “Sorry. I get mean when—” When you what? There is no precedent to whatever unholy case of ego death you have been playing out for months. “—When I get petulant, I guess. That didn’t make much sense, but it’s the best I’ve got, so we’re both going to have to live with it.”

***

Chapter Text

As with most cases involving the government, society and humans in general, a phrase that comes to mind vis a vis the upcoming trial is hurry up and wait. Roy, who spent most of his adult life in the military, is deeply familiar with the lurching pace. Moreover, in this case, having the time to cool down is deeply appreciated.

His weekend goes by gently. Quietly. He lounges around his plush hospital bed, naps away the days, and does his best not to think about anything. It’s too early for physio, and the hospital gave up on trying to force a councillor on him, so he got to do nothing more taxing than watch television—a cursed invention that should be a lot more regulated than it is—and sleep.

If they had had their way, the hospital would have kept him for another four weeks, and Roy likely would have let them. Why wouldn’t he? They are kind while maintaining an emotional distance with the subtlety and discretion of a guillotine, they provided good book recommendations, and, crucially, they are only interested in him inasmuch as he is the amalgamation of organs which function they are responsible for. A match made in heaven.

On Monday, however, DA Moore announces in a press conference that there is enough evidence to prosecute one Franklin Collins for sexual assault, attempted murder and a whole host of other charges. The arraignment is set for Thursday; Roy’s name is politely kept out of it, and, of course, the reporters swarm the hospital within the hour.

***

“Mister Mustang, I really must insist—”

He tunes out the spiel. He’s heard it too many times today. For some reason, they keep kicking him up the chain of command—or whatever the equivalent is, in a hospital—in the hopes of someone changing his mind.

“I’m one patient,” he says. “One patient who can afford to hire private nursing staff. I’m not going to subject every other patient in this place to this circus.” Especially not the other people in his wing. Gotham, unsurprisingly, has double the rate of intimate violence of a maximum security prison. The part of the hospital Roy is staying in also houses plenty of real victims, and Amestris may not have had lawyers, but they had plenty of tabloid journalists. He knows what they would and would not resort to. “In any case, you’ve done what you can for me. I will recover at home as easily as I will here.”

“Mister Mustang—Roy—you live in a hotel.”

Huh. He forgot about that.

“I’ll rent a house, then. Listen, I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving. In case your irrational and misplaced guilt persists, you can channel it productively. Meaning, send Ms Kohli a copy of all my documents and the like, she’ll need it for the case, and be sure to be extra mean to any reporters who cross your path.”

The director exhales a long, self-soothing breath. It’s very clear that she’d like nothing more than to slap some sense into him, but that she’s worried that doing so might rip his stitches. “I do not agree with this course of action. I think you’re letting undiagnosed trauma lead you into making wrong choices about your health and safety, and I think you should let us handle the press. As is our job.”

That’s a nice sentiment. “They already barged into room two-twenty-six and thrust a microphone in the woman’s face. We’re not on the same floor.”

“The reporter in question has been caught and identified, and the charges will be filed.”

Oh, well, that’s good, then. As long as there is justice. “And that’s worth it, is it? What happens when they wander into the CSA wing? No. I appreciate your concern, but I do not consent to any further medical treatment, and I ask to be released. Presently.”

***

Arranging security in Gotham is, he would assume, something of a harrowing prospect—if you’re worried about foxes coming for your chickens, you don’t let a wolf into your house—but he has an ace in his sleeve. Ms Kohli and, via her, Beacon Law, who specialise in helping victims of violent crime from getting chewed up and spit out by a rigged system. They, in turn, recommend a team of trusted bodyguards to shepherd him around for a, comparatively, laughable sum.

“Right, Mister Atkinson,” he says, matching the man’s bland smile with one of his own. It’s a balm to be a paycheck. “I don’t think you’ll find me to be a particularly demanding client at the moment. Here’s hoping the circumstances don’t conspire to make me a liar.”

The ensuing rush is anything but pleasant. Not only has Roy done the bare minimum to set up his life in this universe, his torso makes it very complicated to move around. As a result, he has to put an obscene amount of trust in Ms Kohli, Mister Atkinson, and, a few days later, Nurse Ross. Between the three of them—and their people—they have to keep the press at bay, find him an apartment to rent, and coordinate with the police department and the DA's office.

It’s a lot, but they manage, and with very little time to spare. On Thursday, the arraignment takes place, only it’s fully televised, available for streaming on mobile devices—something Roy can’t begin to wrap his head around—and a lot freer with information than the crumbs scattered during the press conference. Roy can’t precisely be mad at it; the purpose of the whole thing is to prove probable cause, and more transparency is always good. It does, however, result in an unfortunate uptick in the public interest. Somehow, during the week, it became public knowledge that Roy and Brucie Wayne are friends. Things snowball from there, as these things do, until the rumours grow rumours of their own. The Batman only saved Roy because Wayne asked him to keep an eye on his friend slash lover slash secret half-sibling. Wayne and Roy fought, and that’s why Roy was so inconsolable that even the professional security he had wasn’t enough to protect him. Wayne visited Roy at the hospital, heartbroken, and they are now engaged. Married. Divorced. Re-married.

Needless to say, Mister Atkinson expands his security team to seven—eight, including Mister Atkinson—Ms Kohli manages to rent another two apartments in his building, and Nurse Ross finds a team of nurses willing to move into said apartments because driving to and from the building became impractical. Everyone wants to know about this rich foreign prostitute who came to Gotham a handful of months ago and is already rubbing elbows with the bigwigs. All sorts of stories get published, people from all over who claim to have gone to fashion shows with him in Tokyo, have had dinner with him in Beijing and partied with him in Seoul. Photos of him get leaked, both high and messy before Collins, and bloody and ruined, after.

It’s all very distasteful and ridiculous and Roy ignores it by rote. Not only is his standard for ‘problem’ a lot different than even an average Gothamite’s, most of the pressure can’t touch him. He doesn’t use social media, he has no friends, and he’s either sleeping or grimly surviving all the PT. He has as much money as he wants to alchemise, no job, no family. Crucially, he has nothing to lose, so he has nothing to fear. What’s a little public scrutiny going to do? 

With all that said, he also somehow managed to surround himself with genuinely good people. Ms Kohli, Mister Atkinson and Nurse Ross do think he’s about to drop dread from unaddressed trauma, and they’re taking it seriously. Living with or around good people who feel wronged is miserable, only to be endured if there is no other choice.

“Alright, alright, look, I’ll book an appointment with a therapist,” he says, a week after the news had broken and he became Gotham’s topic of the month. “And I’ll—take up a hobby or something. Just stop—” He makes a vague gesture at the whole of Nurse Ross’ body. “Brooding. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“As you say, boss,” Nurse Ross says, all calm competence and blank smiles. Like Roy hadn’t seen his hands shake and the muscles in his jaw tense every time would catch Roy watching a clip about his case. “I’m glad. Do you have a therapist in mind?”

“The bland professionalism doesn’t work since the last round of back stretches; my  ears are still ringing.” True enough. Dentists and physiotherapists share a well of relaxed sadism that’s impossible to ignore or condemn. “And, no. Of course I don’t. The number of people in Gotham I met, remember and hadn’t slept with is as small as you assume.”

“In that case, may I recommend a couple of options? I can forward you their details in an hour.”

Ye gods, therapy. It wasn’t enough to pump his organs full of drugs and knead his muscles into unconditional surrender, now he has to expose a civilian to the horrors of Roy Mustang’s mind. There isn’t a law against this, but there should be and, gods willing, there will be in the future.

“I’m sure anyone you recommend will be fine. And then you’ll stop moping?”

Nurse Ross graces him with a slow, unhurried blink. “I don’t know, boss, you mentioned something about a hobby—”

***

Therapy cashes and burns; Roy expected it would, even if not for the right reasons. He thought the years in the military and enduring their counterespionage training would make themselves known. Unfortunately, while that is certainly the case, it’s only half of the picture.

As obvious as it is in hindsight, Roy doesn’t begrudge himself that he had missed it. Amestris hadn’t developed the field of psychotherapy past making sure her soldiers could be shipped back out as often as they remain profitable. Things are different on Earth. They had centuries of scholarship about the human mind, about uncovering, untangling and, more importantly, redirecting thought and emotion. So, it’s perhaps obvious that, to Roy, the therapist trying to get him to reveal sensitive personal information had registered as an urgent and pressing threat.

In terms of disasters, this one could have been much worse. Between his childhood in a brothel, adolescence as a genocidal weapon of mass destruction, early adulthood as a seditious traitor and middle-age as a military dictator, Roy has never known a time when his innermost thoughts and feelings wouldn’t lead to his and all his friends’ messy deaths. So, really, the fact that the therapist made it out with all her limbs and sensory organs intact was a victory. When he imagines what would happen if she had tried that with Al or Ling or Olivier, it’s easy to be philosophical about making a well-meaning, well-respected medical professional run away in tears.

On the back of that setback, however, he is surprised to have stumbled into a success. The first hobby he grudgingly tried his hand at—jewellery making—was such a good match, he’s honestly a little surprised. It’s not that Roy didn’t like alchemy; it’s just that his relationship with alchemy was about as simple and straightforward as Riza’s with her rifles. He hated, loved and feared it, all of them with his whole heart. Any hopes of one day becoming a normal human being were dashed the day the strange and unwelcome cocktail of emotions started translating to respect. You respect the tiger in your living room, you acknowledge its might, and you never, ever forget that it’s playing nice now, but one moment of inattention means immediate death and destruction.

All of which is to say that, while he wasn’t as superstitious as some, Roy never used alchemy as Al and Ed did, as if it were a part of him, an extension of his will. Even in Gotham, while he had relaxed the rules somewhat, he never transmuted things for the sake of it. He needed money, so he made some gold. He needed documents, so he made some. He hadn’t ever thought to make something pretty, just to make it. You don’t take a dragon out flying just because you enjoy the rush of wind in your hair; that would be insane. Similarly, you don’t spend three hours messing around with a freshly purified gold bar, all the while pretending that you’re doing all of it with mundane tools and equipment. And yet—

It’s fun, is the worst part. Roy is a methodical man by nature and nurture. Hobby or not, he does things properly, which means setting up a workshop, studying up on the theory and investigating local reference material. Earth’s artistic tradition is similar in some ways to what he knows, and in others, it’s breathtakingly original. In this—in jewellery making—he is drawn to Mediterranean cultures, to their delicate wire-work and love of beautiful things. So, he does the legwork, reads up on the theory, orders the equipment he won’t need and takes the time to slowly calibrate his equations to the new medium.

He doesn’t need to do any of it. The people looking after him are professionals; he can kick them out at any time, for any reason, and transmuting gold and purifying it is simple enough; any state alchemist could after the first year of the Academy. It feels blasphemous, nonetheless. Only, Roy isn’t using entry-level Academy arrays, he’s using atmospheric alchemy, and using atmospheric alchemy to shape pretty baubles is nuts.

He stares at the filigree cuff on the table. It’s gorgeous, made out of spider-silk strands of gold arranged in a symmetrical lacework pattern. It’s as pretty as anything he’s seen in Olivier’s vaults, if a bit more discrete. An Armstrong piece would be dripping with diamonds, if nothing else. The cuff he made is less flashy, but an alchemist would spot how uniform the threads are and, more importantly, that the strands were fused, with no additional solder, seam or bead visible.

He wanders out of the impromptu workshop in something of a daze and pads over to the sitting room. “What do you think? Too feminine?” He looks between the delicate cuff and Nurse Ross, who specialised in assisting men through extended physical therapy. Meaning that he’s six-plus feet tall, built like a fridge, and well used to hauling heavy weights around. “Which is not to say that I am presuming your preferences. Liberating your aesthetic senses from gendered limitation is always a worthwhile pursuit.”

“Jesus Christ, boss,” Nurse Ross says, eyes flatteringly wide. “Did you—You can’t—” He closes his mouth with a click, then takes a long step back, glancing around at other people in the sitting room. Between the security, the housekeeper and two of Ms Kohli’s interns, there are quite a few of them. “Look, Mister M, I don’t—I’m flattered, but you’re in a vulnerable position right now. Even if we set aside the fact that the doctor-patient relationship would make any personal entanglements inappropriate—”

If he were a better man, he’d stop this train wreck. Alas, spiteful is just about the kindest epithet that can be attached to Roy. So, he carefully doesn’t burst into laughter, keeps a neutral-to-polite expression on his face and observes the wild-eyed man try to talk his way out of an imaginary courtship.

“—I would encourage you to pursue romantic relationships once the worst of the storm has passed—”

He’s still going. Incredible. Roy never once thought Nurse Ross or anyone from his team found him appealing in any way. If they had, he’d have arranged a discrete transfer. What Nurse Ross is, however, is a sweetheart inside and out. He invented a problem and was, then, so horrified about it that, judging by the sound of it, he’s minutes away from resigning.

“I am not, in fact, attempting a seduction,” he says, mystified. “I am not interested in you romantically or carnally. I just wanted to give you the bracelet because you encouraged me to get a hobby, and this is my first successful piece.” He gives the piece another evaluating look. It’s good, by any standard. Personal preference aside, the gold is pure enough to make it valuable. “You can give it to Ms Ross.” He waves an impatient hand. “I know you’re not married. You’ve spoken about your mother at some length.”

“Mister M—” The panic has receded, but it only left an unfamiliar sort of sadness. “Thank you, that’s—Incredibly generous. Kind. I’m—honoured? I think? But I can’t accept a gift that’s worth two years’ rent. It’s too much. Ma would think I was using her to fence stolen jewellery.”

Yikes. That’s—a fair point. He gives the cuff a third look. It’s beginning to become inconvenient. “Right.” He shifts towards the two mute interns. “Your boss—”

“So unethical,” the girl says. “She would never accept, and I’d quit if she did. But—” She exchanges an uncertain look with her colleague. They’re almost young enough to be Ed’s kids. Almost. “You made this? For real?”

What is the correct response? He hadn’t considered playing it down because—Well, because he doesn’t care. What are they going to do? What can any of them do to him? “I’m good with my hands.” He frowns. Gross. Don’t be gross with the children. “Sorry. I did, yes. I have a good attention to detail.” Better.

“It’s really good.” She scurries over, her colleague less than half a step behind her. “Really good. You did that here? Don’t you need, like, furnaces and things like that?”

Probably.

“You can outsource a lot of it.” True. “And I set up a lot of it. What did you think all those deliveries were? And all that banging and clanging for the past few days?”

The looks he gets are, if nothing else, deeply amusing. “What you do behind closed doors is none of our business, boss,” Nurse Ross says, after a brief but meaningful pause. “You didn’t say, so we didn’t ask.” He hesitates, then bravely forges on. “None of this is normal, you know? Even for Gotham, it’s not normal. I don’t know if you—Since you’re new, I don’t know if you knew. But it’s not.”

Imagine that—the life of Roy Mustang, extraterrestrial zombie, isn’t normal. Shocking.

“We’re trying to give you space,” the girl says. Roy should know her name. She introduced herself, he’s more or less sure. “But whatever, that doesn’t matter right now. If you want, I could—I have some friends I can call. If you want to make some more pieces, we can get someone in here to take photos. Set up an online profile, somewhere.”

What.

“Might help if you considered a publicist,” the boy says, eyes wide and earnest. “That would help. Half of this whole mess is that you are and you aren’t a celebrity. ”

What.

“Don’t worry,” the boy hurries to add, “you can outsource most of that. Hire people to do the legwork. Nobody expects you to—build a brand or anything like that. But—if you want, you could see where it goes. Get the people talking about that, instead of—”

Roy’s lips twitch, incredulity melting into amusement. Get the people talking about the jewellery and not Roy’s brutal assault and unsavoury profession. Gotcha.

Try as he might, he can’t summon up even a little irritation. They don’t even know how ridiculous this whole mess is. He can’t even decide what is more absurd, that a civilian nobody got the drop on the Flame Alchemist, or that the Flame Alchemist is adapting the most destructive alchemy known to man to make pretty bracelets.

“I’ll think about it.”

***

Chapter Text

Ms Kohli, who runs so much of his life by now that she might very well think Roy is too stupid to survive, is all for the idea.

“Be sensible, Roy,” she had said when he brought it up. “You can hardly resume your previous occupation when you can barely leave the building. The sheer impracticality of entertaining clients when you’re the star witness in a criminal trial is absurd. Once things die down, by all means, restructure your life as you please. A backup career can only be a good thing.”

And how could he argue with that, especially since Roy hadn’t once exchanged sex for money and isn’t sure he would be very good at it if he tried? Sleeping with people for free was one thing. Sleeping with people for favours, political advantage, revenge, self-loathing—all those things were tried and true ways of getting through one’s day. Exchanging sex for money was a different game even in Amestris, where money never held as much cultural cachet as it does in Gotham.

Roy hadn’t expended much energy towards understanding the local attitudes towards sex, but what he’s observed always struck him as oddly convoluted. Having wealthy lovers was a celebrated tradition, but only if you kept up the pretence that the money is—incidental. A byproduct of other, more desirable traits. If those traits are not immediately apparent, that’s because they’re discrete. They’re complicated. It’s a class thing, you wouldn’t understand. As far as polite fictions go, this one had power not because it was complex or believable but because of the societal weight behind it. If you let the obvious truth show, if a gap between the curtains cracks open, the repercussions will be immediate.

Roy doesn’t fear the condemnation of the public, of course; he’s no societal strings to be tied down with, but taking another go at the dehumanisation game feels tedious. So, the jewellery-making hobby picks up, slotting in between the physio and ever more frequent interviews with the ADA assigned to the case, one Iris Mackary.

She’s good, by all accounts. Her record is clean, by Gotham standards, and she’s always gone hard at the intimate violence cases that she was allowed to take. Ms Kohli fought a bloody war to get the case to her, and the mood has changed for good since she took over.

They don’t think much of each other, truth be told. Ms Mackary thinks Roy is either a psychopath or a liar and is doing her utmost to cling to every scrap of plausible deniability she can. Roy, similarly, doesn’t think much of anyone who works in Gotham’s DA office. Being in bed with the mob is only acceptable for the first years after throwing off the shackles of an authoritarian government. Anything past that, and you’ve utterly lost sight of what you’re doing and need to be put down for the good of the herd.

With all that said, both Roy and Ms Mackary are practical enough to use each other as necessary. In between the many points of animosity, they are united in the appreciation of the other’s competence. Ms Mackary knows there are worse things to have than an unflappable star witness, sociopath or no, and Roy appreciates the fact that she doesn’t walk on eggshells around him or want to step over him to have a go at Wayne.

“Detective Bryne isn’t wrong about a lot of the evidence being inadmissible,” she says, two days before the first preliminary hearing. “You’d think that this would be an open and shut case, but it’s really not. Most of the physical evidence won’t make it to the jury, what with the Batman intervening and muddying the waters. Same with any statements Collins may have made.”

Roy shrugs, unconcerned. Expecting justice from the state is a laughable notion. After being the state for so long, he feels qualified to make that call. “If his lawyers manage to convince a jury—” And what a wonderful, insane concept that is. A jury. “—that the Batman tried his hand at sexual assault and murder, and failed, I guess they deserve the win.”

“You laugh, but between the evidence they will suppress, the evidence that’s inadmissible and the biases the jury will be bringing into the courtroom, we don’t have much. The case hinges on your testimony, and that’s what I’m basing our strategy on.” A tight, neutral smile appears on her face. “That’s where we’ve the unexpected but appreciated advantage. They expect a traumatised, terrified wreck of a twenty-year-old foreign prostitute, and I want them to keep assuming that until it’s too late to adapt their strategies.”

Huh. “I should stay indoors, then,” he says, amused. “Continue hiding behind security and lawyers and such.”

“Absolutely.” Her smile grows a mean edge. “If possible, find even younger, cuter interns and bigger, more terrifying nurses. I want that bastard’s lawyers to be ready for a woebegone fawn, only for it to take the stand, unzip its skin and reveal a fire-breathing reptile.”

Bless. Bless you. And Roy wouldn’t dream of feeling any type of way about her attitude because she’s the only one who sees him with any degree of clarity. Talk about a farce. “Did Ms Kohli mention the jewellery thing? Will that be a problem for the narrative?”

She barks a short laugh. Mismatched aesthetic aside, she’d do well in Drachma. They have a very uncomplicated relationship with corruption and violence. “Will making you look more wholesome be a problem for me? Shockingly, no. I’d say you should get a whole PR team on it if I wasn’t worried it would ring some alarm bells about you being a plant.”

They’re growing on him, Roy realises with tired horror. They’re terrible and no-good and utterly without hope for a better tomorrow, but nobody could deny Gothamites’ charm.

“So, that’s the plan. We won’t call you on the preliminary hearings and pretrial motions if we can all avoid it. If you do make a court appearance, make sure to look like you’re one mean word away from shattering into a flood of tears and apologies. We’ll adapt the rest as we go.” She hesitates for a moment. “You won’t shatter into a flood of tears, yes? Because the defence will put on their case after us, and they will refocus all of it on you the moment you show yourself to be anything but a broken porcelain doll.”

How stressful. How hurtful. A room full of civilians will have unflattering opinions about the way Roy arranges his intimate encounters.

“I mean it,” she says. “They will do anything except lie outright, and they’re very good at manipulating lies to be true on a technicality. It doesn’t matter that you’re—whatever you are. They will use your absence of hysterics against you. They will have experts testifying you’re insane, that you’re a pathological liar, a psychopath, a sex-addicted junkie desperate for the spotlight.

Oh, no, say it isn’t so. How dreadful. Luckily, Roy went mad with bloodlust straight after puberty, did the worst thing imaginable, and then didn’t kill himself when he understood what his actions meant. It’s all well and good that the defence lawyer will try his even best to shame Roy into incoherence, but you can’t shame monsters with the same methods you developed for people.

“Ma’am, I don’t have family, friends or hope. None of that is, strictly speaking, good, but it definitely means I am difficult to fluster.”

***

For all the ridiculous drama, Roy doesn’t get much in the way of entertainment out of his brush with Earth’s judicial system. Nobody needs him to attend the pretrial motions, the jury selection is closed to the public, and the first major decision that Judge Krasnik makes is to sequester Roy for the duration of the trial. Who this is meant to help, he has no idea, but both the DA and the defense lawyers seem happy, so the judge might very well be playing all sides.

This means that the following seven weeks are his to do what he pleases. In this case, however, his means Ms Kohli’s, Nurse Ross’, Mr Atkinson’s, Ms Suarez’ and Ms Watson’s, because the lineup of people in charge of Roy’s life has ballooned far beyond reason. The people he hired have hired people who have hired people. His security team alone is up to ten people, and the medical team has five nurses on rotation plus the occasional specialist that comes and goes as necessary. Then, of course, Ms Kohli has her stable of interns, and, through that connection, Roy now also employs Ms April Suarez to be his publicist and Ms Erin Watson to be the social media manager of his jewellery business.

The whole thing is horrifying and hilarious, and Roy would have made a bloodbath if he wasn’t so used to the lifestyle. The Führer of Amestris outsourced every task, action and decision they could, even if it would only have saved them seconds. There are only so many hours in the day, after all, and so many decisions a human mind can make. Anything other people can do is outsourced to appropriate experts: the clothes he should wear, the food he will eat, exercises he will do, women he will date. How he stumbled into a similar arrangement here remains unclear, but he is rolling with it. The more interesting question is why. Collins isn’t a big-shot, Roy is, but they don’t know that. Nothing of interest is happening, so why does Roy have fifteen people circling him, not including security?

“Well, part of it is Brucie Wayne,” Lisa tells him, a dreamy-eyed girl of twenty who, he’s pretty sure, hides a multitude of sins behind vague smiles and pretty, discrete makeup. “He’s a star-maker, and he’s shouted you out several times. If Brucie Wayne tweets about your company, you can sell it the next day. Moreover, you got several mentions, and that’s vanishingly rare.”

Celebrity culture, right. He knew this. Knows this.

“You are also glamorous, disarming and unpredictable. In other words, you are the platonic ideal of an old school, showbiz star. Brucie Wayne may have given you a boost, but I’m pretty sure you would have been in the spotlight just because of how well you embody the dream and, consequently, how easily you could get people to buy things.”

In terms of their meanings, Roy understands every word individually, but the overall message escapes him. The conversation about marketing has become inextricably linked with the conversation about sex and money and power. He can’t make heads or tails of it, can’t feel it intuitively, which only makes it more interesting. It shouldn’t be possible, but it is. It shouldn’t work, but it’s more successful than anything else he’s seen. Who could argue against it when the abundance was so overwhelming and the hegemony so complete?

“The dream. Right.” If he starts laughing now, he will never stop. Better to move things along. “Where does that leave us, in practical terms?”

“Just about the where we were. In terms of brand management, the fact that all your pieces are beyond valuable is more beneficial than I’d have assumed—”

Brand management, ye gods. “No, I meant in terms of the case. The media. My life. Where are we with that?”

That might have been too much for the girl. She looks at him with blank incomprehension. “Your life? You went from a forty-five-second segment on a local news program to one of the more recognised names in Gotham. You’re doing everything right, as far as I can tell.”

Right, right. This is it, isn’t it? Roy is living the dream of an average twenty-something year old. There is nothing else, just more of this, more reputation management and influence peddling and a strange dance of selling an idea of accessible exclusivity to people he’s never seen and likely never will.

Easy, he thinks, inhaling a careful, measured breath. Calm down. One step at a time. You’re doing this for Wayne. You’re doing the case, because he’s the best kind of nutcase, the type that reminds you of Ed and Scar and Riza and Olivier and any number of others who looked at god and universe and the world and said, no, you move. After—You’ll deal with after when it comes. For now, do what you’re told, play your part and settle your bill.

“Wonderful. That’s just—super.”

***

The uncanny duality of it all persists all through September until the day of Roy’s testimony finally comes. On one hand, yes, Roy is testifying in an attempted murder trial, and a widely publicised one at that. He has twelve security guards shepherding him to the courthouse, and they had to prevent any number of crazed lunatics from having at him already. On the other hand, the press is swarming around him, shouting deranged questions about his lifestyle, his jewellery, the sexual habits of Bruce Wayne and the clothes he’s wearing.

He ignores all of them except the ones about fashion—Julian deserves the publicity, for his audacity, if nothing else—and manages to keep a straight face. Ms Kohli is already there, looking a little shell-shocked.

“That was—exciting,” she says. “I hadn’t expected—Even Mr Wayne doesn’t get reception like that.”

Yes, well, Mr Wayne is old news and also here to stay. Roy is a newcomer, a victim—which must make him a pushover—and too foolish to have much in the way of a life expectancy. If they don’t get their soundbites now, they might not going forward.

“It’s the suit,” he says instead. “Ms Suarez’ sister’s lover made it.” He shifts his shoulders, showing off the luxurious fabric. It’s risqué, yes, but only if Roy goes out of his way to emphasise the androgynous detailing.

“Julian?”

She looks it over with more interest, then nods at the elaborate but discrete choker around his neck. Roy had planned to go all out on the bondage gear, to make sure leather cuffs were peeking out from underneath his shit sleeves and to swap the tie for a Ring of O in steel and platinum. The enthusiastic young man destroyed that plan without trying. The suit he designed and had made is a gorgeous piece of work, androgynous enough to make a statement but layered and tailored to cover almost every inch of skin. Roy still ditched the tie—walking around with rope tied around his neck was too on the nose, even for him—but the replaced it with a whisper-thin net of platinum choker, perhaps a finger wide.

“The very same.” He should have guessed they all know each other. For all that it’s about four times the size of Central, Gotham is in many ways more like East City. Everybody knows everybody, or just about, and you live or die based on your connections. “He and Ms Watson made an unholy alliance about my wardrobe going forward. I thought it best to bow out of the conversation gracefully and let the young people work.”

“Certainly.” The indulgent, exasperated smile on Ms Kohli’s face is expected, but Roy enjoys it nonetheless. He’s earned it. They all think it’s hilarious when Roy makes pointed comments about other people’s age, not knowing that he’s fifty going on five thousand. “Come on, madam bailiff will take us to the waiting room.”

***

They don’t wait too long; a couple of hours, perhaps. Roy spends the time alternating between the briefcase full of magazines he brought—fashion, cosmetics, luxury—and getting used to the accursed mobile device that everyone in this world has. Mr Atkinson’s peons bring enough pizza for all of them to share over the lunch break, and Roy has to expand some creative thinking to avoid not getting any grease on his suit.  By the time the bailiff gets them, he’s reached a state of relaxed focus that would have his typical opponents diving for cover.

“Mr. Mustang? They’re ready for you inside.”

Bless. He straightens Roy straightens his jacket, rolling his shoulders back. “Wish me luck, Mister Atkinson.”

***

The courtroom is packed, much to his lack of surprise. It also looks remarkably like a theatre stage. He doesn’t even attempt to hide his interest as he takes in the ridiculous room. The man—the judge, presumably- sits behind a bench, placed on top of a raised platform at the far end. On the wall behind him is a large, round symbol of sorts, flanked by two flags, one American and the other Gotham’s own. Rows of wooden pews line the space behind a sturdy wooden railing. The overhead lights, a little too bright, lend the air a sterile weight.

On the left side of the room is Ms Mackary, with a gaggle of younger assistants huddled at her sides. On the right side of the aisle sits—

He doesn’t slow down, but he lets himself have a good look at the possible serial killer, Mister Franklin Collins, sitting alongside his defence counsel, Mr. Langford. He looks—normal. Well put together, in a nice suit, with chestnut hair neatly combed back. He’s younger than Roy had thought; early forties, perhaps, and his face is pleasant. Forgettable, in a comforting way. You never could have guessed he was the type to torture young men to death.

The attorney appears older, impeccably groomed, and self-assured. Beside him, another suited individual—perhaps co-counsel or a junior partner—taps quietly at a laptop, occasionally leaning over to whisper something. Collins himself is dressed in a conservative suit, the sort that blends, invisible. His eyes flick toward the prosecution’s table, then toward the judge, revealing no trace of worry. It's almost impressive.

“Here, sir, step this way, please.”

Oh, interesting. He had slowed down, busy staring at the defendant and his team. No matter. Appearing unstable and emotionally compromised is more or less the deafness strategy here.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, voice subdued, eyes dropping to the floor. Here’s hoping the ADA has learned enough about him to know a play when he’s putting it on so outrageously. Heavens know they spent enough time together for her to assume as much.

“Calling Mr. Roy Mustang to the stand,” says another bailiff in a clear, calm voice.

Ye gods,

“Good afternoon, Mr Mustang,” the judge says. He looks capable enough. A bit annoyed, perhaps, but ultimately professional. “You’ve been sequestered, so I assume you understand you have not heard other testimony. We appreciate your cooperation. Are you ready to be sworn in?

Ah, yes. The oath. How very charming.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

He lets his focus dissolve as he goes about the quaint little ritual. His eyes bob about, undirected, until—

Bruce Wayne sits in the front seat, body crammed into the narrow bench and making it look natural. He’s wearing jeans, a black turtleneck that shows off his chest to spectacular effect and a watch sitting loose on his wrist. He looks like someone’s expensive indulgence, imported from the other side of the world, bred and raised to lounge near scenic bodies of water and receive adoration whenever he would permit. He looks like a spare heir to a wealthy, wealthy kingdom, like Olivier, when she got it in her head to go undercover as, inevitably, a priceless accessory.

Roy shouldn’t be staring. It’s weird. He’s weird. Eyes on the prize, Mustang; you’re paying your debts. That’s, more or less, what your whole life is about.

“—Nothing but the truth?”

He inhales a smooth breath. “I do.”

***

Chapter Text

Ms Mackary stands, tall and focused, a legal pad in one hand and a pen in the other. She confers briefly with a junior colleague before turning her attention to the front of the courtroom. She tugs her severe, sensible jacket straight. “Good afternoon, Mr. Mustang. Please state your full name for the record.”

“My legal name is Roy Mustang, but I was born Matsuda Raito.” He pauses briefly, letting his head fall a centimetre to the side. “Raito Matsuda, by your customs. After I moved to Gotham, I changed it.”

Ms Mackary inclines her head. “Thank you. Since you mentioned, please tell us when you moved to Gotham and why.”

Well, now, she certainly doesn’t waste time. Roy spends a long moment considering if he should play up his supposed youth, if he should stammer or wobble, but decides against it. This is the state’s case, meaning it’s expected that Roy would be prepared and coached to within an inch of his life. “I arrived a little over a year ago. I heard that Gotham is more accepting of unusual career paths, and I was due for a change of scenery. I was fortunate enough to have had the funds to support myself and was curious about the city’s reputation.”

Ms Mackary jots a note on her pad, then looks up. “Could you clarify the source of those funds?”

“I’m an escort.” He leans forward, his chin on his palm, elbow planted on the bench in front of him. “Independent, high-end. It suits my lifestyle.”

Everyone knows this. Literally, everyone knows, and a ripple of whispers passes though the spectators, excited, thrilled little bursts of sound. Bruce Wayne, the darling lamb that he is, is smiling ahead, eyes vacant, giving every sign that he would struggle to walk and breathe at the same time.

“So you’re a self-made man, as it were? You earned your wealth?”

Thing is, they hadn’t scripted this part. Ms Kohli gave the police his detailed background, but he hadn’t expected he would go into detail about his finances. “Not at all. The bulk of my money came from the insurance payout after the fire that claimed my parents, plus inherited assets. I was fortunate to have made a couple of fortunate investments after that. These days, I don’t need to work if I don’t have to.”

“Let’s talk about the nature of that work. How would you describe your occupation?”

“I have intimate encounters with clients who interest me and who can afford it.” He rolls his shoulder in a light shrug, keeping his voice cool. Olivier cut with crocodile. So, Olivier. “By which I mean I charge money in exchange for intimacy, both sexual and romantic.”

Ms Mackary makes a brisk nod and checks something off on her notepad. “And you operate within Gotham’s legal framework, correct?”

“Certainly. I am registered with the ASC, all my financial obligations have been settled for the coming year, and my licenses and permits are in order.

“And to confirm, you have no criminal record, no prior arrests?”

He doesn’t let his lips twitch, doesn’t let his eyes widen or, crucially, doesn’t burst out into a flood of laughter. He doesn’t, and he never had. The way things played out, he was never convicted for the endless terrorism, slaughter and treason “Correct. My record is clean.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mustang. Let’s move to the next topic: your familiarity, or lack thereof, with the defendant.”

So, that’s the tone? Interesting, if so. It could be that she’s still leading the defense by the nose, that she’s trying to shift their attention from Roy not being as much of a shrinking violet as they expected. In his experience, being glib in situations like these is never a good look in the long run. He will stick to his guns, yes, but she wants this win a lot more than he does.

“On June twenty-first of this year, were you working in any capacity, or were you off-duty?”

Off-duty? Now, where did that come from? Is she trying to subconsciously connect his composure to him belonging to a government agency? Hookers are never ‘on duty’, Ma’am.

“I haven’t taken any clients since I came to Gotham, interestingly. This city is a lot to take in. I consider myself fairly well-travelled—” Aha-ha. “—but Gotham is unique, even with that in mind. I needed some time to get my legs underneath me, as it were.”

This time, the buzz that sweeps through the courtroom is more agitated. Fair enough; that bit wasn’t in the press briefing. Wayne arranges his expression to something appropriately shocked, but Roy doesn’t buy it for a second. If he hasn’t investigated Roy’s background thoroughly, he’d be damn surprised.

“You haven’t been taking clients? I apologise, Mr. Mustang. I only ask because the rumours of your exploits have indicated otherwise.”

The defense lawyer, Langford, stands up, movement interestingly fluid considering his age. He can’t be a year under sixty. “Objection, hearsay.”

“Sustained. Rephrase.”

“Yes, Your Honour,” Ms Mackary says. Her tone is interesting. Somewhere between surprised and wary. Is it not the norm to object to these things? They coached him about it relentlessly, instructed him not to pay it any mind. Is this particular objection nitpicky? “Is there a specific reason that you haven’t taken any clients?”

“I didn’t need to. I don’t need to. I have more than enough money to live comfortably, and I wanted to immerse myself into the local scene organically. Contacts are everything in my line of business.”

Ms Mackary nods, expression serious. Solemn. “Can you further define what you mean by contacts?”

“Objection, relevance.”

Ms Mackary’s lips presseds together briefly, nostrils flaring. “Your Honor, the line of questioning regarding Mr. Mustang’s client protocols is entirely relevant. I’m laying the foundation for Mister Mustang’s process when considering, vetting and accepting clients. Since the defense claims that the defendant was, in fact, Mr. Mustang’s client, I am well within my rights to ask these questions.”

The judge is silent for several long seconds, then inclines his head. “Very well. Objection overruled; you may proceed.”

“Thank you, Your Honour. Mister Mustang, do you need me to repeat the question?”

Woof. This might be more interesting than he expected. The testimony itself is dull, but the defense council is not afraid to be aggressive from the start. There is something important there, too. Ms Mackary predicted they would be analytical and cruel when necessary, but that they would take care not to come off as hostile, since Roy is undoubtedly the victim in this scenario. Apparently not, and figuring out why could be fun.

“No, I think I remember.” Bless. “Contacts, in my case, have typically meant taking casual, short-term lovers. Individual encounters, by and large.”

“Which differs from your work—how, precisely?”

A sincere huff of laughter escapes him. How does having one night stands differ from getting paid to have sex with strangers? Strangers who, most of the time, consider the matter of free will to fly out of the window the moment they pay. Oof. If it were Chris, here, testifying, she might very well have tanked the case out of spite, just for that remark alone.

“Objection, relevance.”

“Judge—”

“Counselors, approach.”

Right. So, this is happening. He’s testifying about similarities and differences between his nonexistent escorting practices and the bender he fell into after dying. That might as well happen.

“—may proceed, councillor.”

Ms Mackary marches back to the centre of the room, expression grim but satisfied. “Proceed, Mr. Mustang.”

Sure. “I suppose the most material difference is that I don’t accept money, gifts or favours as payment, and that the encounter isn’t as structured and contractually bound as it would be if I was seeing a client.” He puts on a polite, vague smile. “There are other, more conceptual differences between the two, but they might be going beyond the scope of your question.”

“Thank you. You mentioned contractual binds. Can you elaborate on that?”

Against all odds, it seems that she is, in fact, trying to establish that Roy hadn’t accepted payment in return for being murdered. “As I said, I hadn’t accepted any clients since I came to America. However,  I can outline how I managed the client-provider relationship in China.”

“If you would.”

Well, alright. Best reach back to the basics that Aunt Chris teaches all her chicks. “The process is more involved than you might think. It comes down to a chain of conditions, each of which needs to be met for the process to continue.”

He takes a glance around the gallery and swallows a sigh. They look mesmerised, breathless with anticipation. Talk about blood sports. This is an attempted murder trial.

“The first, most important condition is that any prospective client has to have a referral referred from a past client or a person of trust. With that out of the way, we would arrange the first meeting, typically in a semi-public place, where we would negotiate the very basics. Meaning that each person hopes to get out of the arrangement, how long it will last, and what are the boundaries and expectations. If it turns out there is enough compatibility between us, we would schedule a series of chemistry meetings, typically between two and five, to see if both parties are satisfied with the fit. After that, the contracts would be signed and the dates set.”

He pauses to take a sip of water while the buzz in the gallery dies down and the judge stops banging his funny little gavel. None of this is news to the state or the defense, but the spectators are likely expected something both more and less lurid. Granted, some escorting arrangements align more closely to the mainstream understanding of the sex trade, but Roy parroting the systems his sisters had built over the years. Di arranged her business even more strictly, but she specialised in intense, psychological scenes that involve more risk.

“Thank you. How long do your contracts typically last?”

He shrugs. “There is no set time for these things. My preference is about a month. If I really liked someone, I would accept a shorter or longer timeframe. The shortest contract I accepted was a week. The longest was six months. It depends on the situation.”

“And, as a part of these expectations you mentioned, do you include extreme kink? By which I mean extensive physical injuries, consensual non-consent, loss of consciousness, things like that?”

Roy smiles. It’s not funny. It’s not. Many an urban legend was spun in Amestris about the deranged sexual escapades that a man like Roy must enjoy. It’s hilarious to see similar expectations here, only with him as the hapless victim, not the sadistic employer.

“No. I have never and will never entertain such fantasies. I don’t accept any form of violence during intimate encounters, down to raised voices. The services I offered are companionship, discretion and acceptance.” Ye gods. Somewhere, Maes is dissolving into component molecules from the pressure of his laughter.

“Objection, relevance!”

Roy lets his attention scatter and eyes blur as the lawyers get into it again. So far, this experience has been more interesting than what he had feared, even if only because it’s dawning on him that Ms Mackary might very well lose the case. Competent witness or not, the defense lawyers are competent and composed, the judge is visibly leaning their way, and the gallery and jury both seem to be more interested in the spectacle than anything else.

“—before that night?”

He blinks. “I beg your pardon, Ma’am, could you repeat the question?”

Ms Mackary’s blank expression doesn’t waver. “Had you met or been in contact with the defendant, Mr. Franklin Collins, before that night?”

Ah, good; here’s hoping she’s done setting her foundation. “I’ve never spoken to him, in person or otherwise, nor had a third party arranged a meeting.”

“I understand. Could you tell the jury when you first became aware of who he was?”

“I was told his name when they took my statement at the hospital.”

Mr. Langford stirs. “Objection, hearsay.”

Roy indulges in a long, curious look. It’s a bad matchup for Ms Mackary, he thinks, taking in the two lawyers, barking legalese shorthand at each other and the judge. Roy might not know law, but he knows people, and he knows that the first person to lose their cool is immediately at a disadvantage. In some cases, the disadvantage would be made up by other factors—extraordinary intelligence, force of personality, impeachable moral conviction—but it’s not a small hurdle to jump. Attorney Langford is doing his job, and he’s doing it impeccably, but Ms Mackary is taking things personally.

“—sustained. The jury will disregard that statement. Proceed.”

Yikes.

“Did you at any point before today come to learn Mr. Collins’ name?”

Roy inclines his head, fascinated. “I did.”

“Describe that event.”

He takes a moment to observe Mr. Langford’s attentive expression and considers his phrasing. Hearsay? What does that mean? Should he be more specific? Less?

“I woke up in the Farroway Memorial Hospital on the 24 ^th . The nurse—” Something in Ms Mackary’s expression tightened. “—Nurse Harold caught me up on the basics. Soon after that, Officer—” What was his name? “—Cole and Officer Nickson conducted a more thorough interview. I believe the conversation should be on record.”

“It was. So you learned Mr. Collins’ name from the police officers who interviewed you upon waking.”

That’s what he said, yes. “Precisely.”

She nods, satisfied. In the background, Mr. Langford settles a little in his seat. Success; they dodged another argument.

“Is it possible you had met Mr. Collins at a prior event, party, or any other social gathering in Gotham?”

Well. “I suppose it’s not impossible that we attended the same event,” he says. “I doubt it. We hardly move in the same circles, and I’m very rarely alone. People who I—” He lets his lips twitch. “—spent time with put great stock in privacy.” He might legitimately fall over, dead. He might choke and die on his audacity. “I can say with certainty that I have no recollection of his name, face or presence before the incident.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mustang.” Ms Mackary makes a deliberate, lengthy pause as she replaces one bundle of papers with another one on her desk.

“So, it is your testimony that you had no prior arrangement with the defendant? You hadn’t consented or even implied to consent to a sexual encounter with him that night?”

“Objection, compound.”

“Let me rephrase,” Ms Mackary snaps. “Did you at any time consent to a sexual encounter of any kind with the defendant?”

Bless. “No.” 

“Thank you.” Ms Mackary inhales a sharp, tight breath. “Your Honour, if I may ask for a short recess—”

***

“Mr. Mustang, you’ve testified you were at the Cobalt Lounge on June twenty-first. What was the atmosphere like that night?”

What was the atmosphere like? What a strange question. “Polished, loud, decadent.  Exclusive. Expensive. Elitist. About what you would expect.”

Ms Mackary makes a quick, likely performative note on her notepad. “Very good. Now, please walk us through what happened that evening, to the best of your recollection.”

Here we go. He straightens in his seat a little, emptying his expression of most everything except calm confidence. “I arrived at the Lounge around seven. I had a some drinks, met with some old friends, met some new ones—the usual. Around half past ten, I had returned to my booth. If it were the weekend, I’d have brought a spare outfit, just in case, but since it was Thursday, I refreshed myself with what I had on hand. The waitstaff brought me my drink—vodka sour, my usual—and disorientation hit quickly. I lost consciousness within minutes of drinking it.”

“You were drinking previously? Throughout the night?”

Roy shrugs. “I was at a party, Ma’am. I drank and danced and kissed many an admirer. Until Mister Collins decided to rape and murder me, it was a rather nice party. I had fun.”

“Objection, non-responsive, speculation, calls for a legal conclusion.”

“Sustained.”

Ms Mackary’s bloodless smile remains in place. “Please try to limit your answers to the questions I’m asking, sir. Thank you. Again, were you drinking throughout the night?”

Roy hums and flicks his eyes Wayne’s way. The tedium of this charade has begun to outweigh its novelty. He’s going to go through with it, of course, but only because the wretched man deserves it. “I was, yes. After arriving to the Lounge, I had my first drink around seven twenty, and continued drinking through the night.”

“You mentioned having fun. When did that stop, if at all?”

Oh, good, she said the same thing, only used somewhat different terminology, and now he can answer. “As I said, my drink was spiked. Drugged. I lost consciousness in my private booth in Cobalt Lounge and woke up naked, bound, gagged and bleeding in an unfamiliar hotel room, with Mister Collins kneeling between my legs, cutting into my abdomen. That’s, I think, the moment where the evening took a drastically grim turn.”

They’re not even whispering. The good people of Gotham, who paid a ridiculous amount of money to be present at the trial, are staring at him like he’s proclaimed himself a block of cheese puppeting a meat-suit.

“Understood,” Ms Mackary says, once it becomes clear the defense won’t object. “Could you describe your condition more precisely?

A bit morbid, no? Then again, that is sort of the point of his testimony, to shock. “I was on a bed, wrists and ankles secured to the four posts with steel cuffs. There was a barbed gag in my mouth. When I came to, Mister Collins was naked as I was, cutting into my stomach with a knife held in his right hand and touching me with his left.”

“You are positive it was Mister Collins inflicting those wounds and assaulting you?”

Roy inclines his head, expression more or less blank. Is there a right demeanour for testimony like this? Should he cry? He doesn’t know if he could, honestly. He was never trained to cry on command. If anything, he was specifically trained not to show weakness.

“Beyond a shadow of a doubt. I had some time to observe him in the time between waking up and getting rescued. The situation was—memorable. Even if I didn’t have a good memory for faces, I’d remember his.”

Mackary’s lips press into a thin line. She glances at Collins, then addresses the jury for a heartbeat before turning back to Roy. “So, to be absolutely clear, you did not consent in any way to that scenario?”

Bless. “No.”

“What happened next?”

It's probably. “Eventually, Batman and Robin barged in. I recall a loud crash and a lot of shouting. Then I remember Robin trying to patch me up, removing my gag. Batman is stopping my bleeding. I blacked out soon after they had taken the cuffs of my arms. My shoulders were dislocated.”

And the most interesting part of all this, he thinks, vaguely amazed, are the two vigilantes. This could have been a real boy of twenty, telling you about his maiming and near death, and the gallery full of the Who’s Who of Gotham is foaming at the mouth to hear testimony about Batman and Robin.

“Very good. Now, Mr. Mustang, some have suggested those severe wounds were inflicted during the altercation between Mr. Collins and the vigilante known as Batman. How do you respond to that claim?”

“Objection, hearsay—” Fair enough. He doesn’t know much about how these objections work, but the hearsay one is about not being specific enough. Probably. “—for speculation. Relevance.”

Ouch.

“Sustained.”

“Apologies,” Ms Mackary says, voice a flat, tense monotone. “Who inflicted the stab wounds on your abdomen, sir?”

Be reasonable, Mustang. If you walk out of here, the judge will try to throw you in jail, then you will snap and end up right back where you started all those years ago, blood of a people on your hands and very little idea about how you got there.

“Mister Collins had. The room was well-lit, and I was awake and under his care for about an hour before Batman and Robin arrived. I remember it all very vividly.” He pauses, tapping a slow, wondering beat into his breastbone. “There was no one else in the room when I woke up, as far as I could tell. When Batman and Robin came, the first thing they did was to get him away from me. Batman subdued him, and Robin lingered, administering first aid. I doubt I would have survived otherwise.”

“Objection, calls for speculation, foundation.”

“I don’t have the foundation to testify about my near death?”

Roy exhales a long, slow breath. He had just been criticising Ms Mackary about taking things personally. If he’s any good—Roy opens his eyes with some difficulty. As expected, Attorney Langford is delighted by the reaction he got, as he should be. He wasn’t even aiming his shots Roy’s way; that will come on cross-examination. No, he was trying to badger Ms Mackary into incoherence and one his strays caught Roy right in the ass.

“—sustained. Please answer the questions posed to you, Mr. Mustang.”

Ugh.

“Apologies, Your Honour,” he says. “Apologies, Attorney Langford. Attorney Mackary. I can continue.”

“Very good, Mr. Mustang.” Ms Mackary looks, if anything, vaguely, grimly sympathetic. Gods know she’s been struggling with the same thing Roy has. “Explain what happened when Batman and Robin arrived.”

“They crashed through the window,” Roy says. “I couldn’t see from my vantage point, of course, but Batman got Collin off of me in seconds. Robin removed the knife, some seconds later, and applied emergency care. Meaning a spray of alcohol, bandages and a compress.”

Not letting his eye stray Wayne’s way shouldn’t be difficult, but it is. People have been saving Roy for decades, but he was something at the time. He was the genius alchemist or the up-and-coming Colonel the War Minister or, of course, the Führer. Last time anyone gave him a second glance without wanting something in return was—Aunt Chris, probably. Yeah.

“After subduing Collins, Batman came to help his partner and took over stitching the worst of the cuts shut. Robin removed the gag and picked the locks on my wrists. Unbeknowst to both of us, my shoulders were dislocated, so the shock of trying to move them into a more natural position knocked me out.”

Ms Mackary nods, once, twice. “You mention the gag and the cuffs. Do you recall them well? Well enough to describe to the jury?”

“I do.” Attorney Langford is almost vibrating in place with how alert he is with an objection. Best be careful with your words. “My hands and feet were bound by steel handcuffs. I hadn’t noticed any particular name or manufacturing mark on them. They were, however, correctly sized, sitting snug around the limb.” Getting out of them might have been possible if he dislocated two fingers, but he hadn’t sat through advanced training like that since he was a teenager. “The gag was custom-made. The straps were made out of rubber and kept the tension on the device. The ball was made out of some sort of synthetic foam that teeth—” No, come on. Do better. “—That my teeth had sunken into and couldn’t budge out of without help. Sharpened metal barbs came out of the ball alternating between an inwards and an outwards bent. They dug into my gums and cheeks. The ball of the gag, combined with the elastic strap kept my jaw utterly immobile. Meaning that if there was a function for the barbs, other than to cause constant pain, that function was not evident.”

The hush in the courtroom is gratifying, at least. Roy indulges in a look towards Collins, who is spacing out. Good call. He’s not a good enough actor to convincingly play the outraged innocent, but he can look vaguely devastated. Shocked that he’s been humiliated like this.

“Thank you, Mr. Mustang.” Ms Mackary clears her throat slightly, making a mark on her notepad. “Could you identify the implement if you were shown it?”

“I could.”

“Objection, Your Honour. May we approach?”

This particular dustup looks to be particularly heated. Roy watches on in mild interest while his mind whirrs on empty. Interestingly, he’d rather sit on the defendant’s seat, that he’d rather let himself be judged for sins he had or hadn’t committed than have to play this game. The notion, the concept of Roy Mustang letting the state have the first and last go at administering justice is laughable.

“Ms Mackary click-clacks back to the centre of the room, sensible heels almost leaving skid marks on the tile. By the look of it, she’s lost this skirmish. “To confirm, Mr. Mustang, to your knowledge, did Batman or Robin inflict any injuries?”

“There was no easy way to remove the gag, for all that Robin tried. The barbs did more damage coming out than in. Also, I injured my shoulders after they let me out of the cuffs. Those injuries were incidental and unavoidable. Past that, no. They were careful, comforting and disciplined.”

“So you’re clear in your mind that the life-threatening injuries occurred before they arrived?”

“Crystal clear.”

She allows a moment for the jury to absorb the statement. A hush lingers, the weight of Roy’s words pressing the gravity of the situation into the room.

“Thank you, Mr. Mustang. Now, let’s shift focus to what happened after you were rescued. Could you briefly describe your recovery process?”

Yikes.

“Long, painful, and expensive. I was in intensive care for some days after being taken in and had multiple surgeries to address the extensive internal bleeding and organ damage. Mister Bruce Wayne was generous enough to offer me a place in Thomas Wayne Hospital about a week later, and they oversaw most of my most pressing physical therapy. I still employ a team of nurses to assist me in my day-to-day life and help with the physical therapy routine I will have to continue for some years yet.”

The words Bruce Wayne serve as some sort of electrifying shock. The sombre silence is gone, swiftly replaced with a tense anticipation. Bruce Wayne? Had the name Bruce Wayne been said on the witness stand? Say it isn’t so, or better yet, say more.

“Could you tell us about the psychological toll?”

Ah.

“It’s difficult to calculate,” he says after a long beat. They’ve been here before, during their meetings, and he’s never to date found an answer he is willing to give that satisfies her. “I am not well. Psychologically. I can’t sleep; I dissociate and derealize. I promised my head nurse that I would try going to therapy, and the doctor—a fantastic lady, credit to her profession—walked out. I—” He’s looking at Wayne for some reason, suddenly feeling rattled. If you’re doing something, you might as well do it well; Roy’s lived by that concept his whole life. He already decided he would do the trial properly, so he’s going to. Easy. Easy. “I’m abstracting my emotions. Separating them from my sense of personhood. That’s why I’m so—” He makes a vague gesture. “—Strange. Cold. I am aware of this. Literature suggests that these are symptoms of a trauma response. That they will heal in time.” All true, if misleading. “I remain unconvinced. Some things, you never heal from. Some things you can only survive and learn how to deal with the scars.”

Wayne’s vapid expression tightens and grows unnatural with lack of movement. Why is Roy watching him so closely? It’s not like they’re even thinking about the same things. Roy is telling the truth, but his damage is well-earned and accumulated on the road to Hell he built with his own two hands. Wayne doesn’t know, can’t know, can’t help even if he wanted to. So—

He blinks and focuses. Right.

“—have any motive —financial, personal, or otherwise—to fabricate these claims against Mr. Collins?”

The rush of clarity snaps back into place. Right. Collins. Trial. Debt. “Mister Collins is beneath my notice in every conceivable way.” Whoops. Slow down. “Which is to say that, fundamentally, he isn’t worthy of notice—” No, no. Back up. “Ahem. My apologies. The previous question left me distracted. To answer your question, no. I am financially better off than he is, I am better connected than he is, I have more promising prospects than he does. I have suffered financial and personal costs as a result of this that I will never be able to recoup.”

The agitation in the gallery rises, the atmosphere shifting into something—pleased, maybe. This is the sort of spectacle they came to see, maybe?

“Very good. If you could have avoided a public courtroom, would you have?”

This is a new one. They hadn’t rehearsed this bit. Roy takes a moment to consider the question. On one hand, doing this behind closed doors would be faster, simpler and cleaner. On the other hand, the whole point of this is to put on a freak show. If he was looking to be practical and straightforward, he’d have vaporised the maniac at a hundred meters and called it a day.

“I am not enjoying the spectacle.” True. “I do not enjoy having to do this at all.” Even more true, but elaborate. The prosecutor looks like she’s at the end of her rope; work with her a little. “I am laying out personal information that I cannot bring myself to discuss in a therapy session, and I’m doing it in front of cameras. My security team now numbers twelve armed men, and I need every one of them to keep the lunatics at bay. The images of my cut-up body have surfaced on the Internet and have been shared across the world. If I could have avoided any of these things, let alone all of them, I would.”

“Do you mean to say that you were forced to testify? That you didn’t have the option to refuse?”

Go to Hell, he thinks, almost fondly. Go drown in a well.

“I could refuse, and I didn’t. I was informed that there wouldn’t be much of a case without my testimony. That Mister Collins wouldn't even get charged. I suppose I found that option more distasteful than the circus I’m living through now.” He taps a slow beat into the wood of the table. “One wonders what would have happened if Mr. Collins got his way. If Batman and Robin arrived an hour later and found him cutting off my arms and legs at the shoulder—”

“Objection, your Honour, there is no question pending.”

“Sustained. The jury will disregard everything after. One wonders. ’”

Roy loses the half-hearted battle with himself and takes a brief but considering look at the judge. The man’s face is more or less blank, set in an expression of blanket disapproval. If not for the tight muscles around his mouth and eyes, he would have been handsome. Unfortunately, while sneering disgust is a good look on some—Roy himself, for example—Judge Krasnik only looks unpleasant.

Ms Mackary clears her throat, and Roy’s attention jumps her way. “Mr. Mustang, a couple of things before we wrap up. Do you know if there is a reason why Mr. Collins had targeted you for this crime?”

Like a well-dressed jack-in-the-box, Attorney Langford snaps to attention. “Objection, calls for speculation.”

“Objection sustained.”

Shocking.

Ms Mackary inhales sharply, exhales and continues. “Based on your interactions and what you observed that night, do you have any sense or impression of why Mr. Collins might have targeted you?”

Again, like clockwork, Attorney Langford chimes in, tone pointed. “Objection, Your Honor! That still invites speculation and opinion beyond the factual testimony.”

Now what? Ms Mackary, for one, doesn’t look like she’s letting this one go. She whirls around, shoulders set, metaphorical smoke coming out of her ears. “Your Honor, I’m not asking for definitive insight into Mr. Collins’s motives. I’m merely asking Mr. Mustang to share what he observed that might shed light on his behavior. My question is grounded in his firsthand experience that night.”

Attorney Langford makes an irritated, performative sound. “Your Honor, if we permit this line of questioning, we risk turning the witness’s impressions into unverified conjecture.”

“I am tempted to sustain the objection,” the judge says, after a beat. “However, I will let you rephrase, Attorney Mackary. I will not have laypeople commenting on the defendant’s state of mind, witness or not.”

Huh. Interesting. Is it spin, or is he worried that there will be a recording of him being obnoxious in a case against Brucie Wayne’s friend?

“I will ensure my question remains within those bounds, Your Honor,” Ms Mackary says.

“Proceed with a final rephrasing that complies with my instructions.”

Ugh.

“Mr. Mustang, considering what you personally observed that evening, can you describe any factors or behavior you noticed in Mr. Collins that might explain why he chose to target you?

Roy meets her gaze. What is this about? Why did you fight for this question? What is Roy supposed to say? Is he supposed to lie? What?

“Based on the way he was touching me and the words he was saying, I think he was taken with my appearance,” he says, trying and failing not to sound cynical. “He didn’t speak much, overall. He liked to watch how my chest expanded with breath, how my heart beat. He would put his ear on my ribcage while moving the knife so he could hear my heartbeat speed up. Which is to say that I think he was impressed by my relative youth and health, even if only they are in such contrast to himself.”

Got you, Roy thinks. That was a definite spark of anger in Collins’s eyes. You didn’t like that. Good to know. Predictable, perhaps, but important nonetheless. He will not mind being called a lunatic, but he doesn’t like being insulted, being demeaned. As for Wayne, the fixed grimace of jovial imbecility has softened into something a little more human.

A beat passes as ADA Mackary nods, satisfied. The judge inclines his head, and Attorney Langford reluctantly sits down, likely signalling that he’s out of objections for now. Ms Mackary clears her throat, swallowing every trace of visible irritation from her face or voice. “Mr. Mustang, is there anything else you’d like the court and the jury to understand about your experience that evening?”

He shrugs. “I suppose I could only summarise my testimony. I was assaulted and have been tortured nearly to death. Setting aside the fact that the actions Mr. Collins subjected me to are not something one can consent to, he never allowed me to give consent or to revoke it. I was drugged, then immediately gagged and bound. I couldn’t do anything except bleed and, one presumes, die.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Attorney Mackary. Ladies and Gentlemen, we will break for lunch, and then the defence will get an opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Please do not discuss the case with anybody else—”

***

Chapter Text

“—the witness is not to discuss his testimony with anyone during the break. Bailiff, please see to it.”

Translation: Gag stays on, just invisible this time.

Roy will freely admit that whatever mood he’s in is not stellar. He’s not angry; nobody he loves is under attack. What he is, is annoyed. At himself, at the lawyers, at the judge. In this situation. Between one thing and another, few people went out of their way to bait and prod Roy. Even his superiors were wary of him, being aware of how close to snapping every war alchemist was, and how much damage they could do before they’re put down. Hell, even the homunculi were more careful with him than this civilian lawyer. Where does his bravery come from? Could he, conceivably, believe that his money could keep him safe? Or did he abstract the danger of his position to keep himself sane, and then bought into his self-soothing lies?

The room he’s escorted into is an eight-by-ten box with cinder‑block walls, a folding table, and a clock that ticks like one of Riza’s metronomes. Lunch appears—sandwich, apple, mini‑carton of milk—delivered through the door by the same bailiff who escorted him inside. If he looks closely, Roy is pretty sure he could see the petty satisfaction bubbling up from the man’s skin. A small man, given a measure of power over someone who outranks him anywhere except in this one situation.

Calm down. You’re beginning to sound like Myles, and from there it’s only a couple of short steps to channelling Olivier. If that happens, even Gotham’s flora should be concerned about its future prospects.

He unwraps the sandwich and counts the layers (two), the pickles (one, wilted), the options (zero). Talking would violate the judge’s order. So he listens instead.

Through the vent above the door, voices leak—Kohli, Atkinson, Nurse Ross—hushed, rapid‑fire.

“…told you Krasnik leans defence in vigilante‑taint cases. Anything with Batman, and he clutches the Fourth Amendment like a rosary.”

“…Langford smelled that bias an hour ago. Going to push hard after lunch—watch for a motion to strike half the direct as ‘non‑responsive dramatics.’”

“…they make sure Roy eats? He gets mean when his blood sugar tanks—remember the physio session?”

Roy’s lips curve into a smile around the cardboard milk straw. That was staged, every word, and also horribly, beautifully familiar. It seems that he surrounds himself with sneaky traitors in every life.

The bailiff coughs—conversation ceases. Footsteps retreat.

***

With no humans to dissect, Roy dissects himself. What do you know? What can you conclude?

Well, for one, the judge is biased. Even if he disregards his subjective impression as unreliable, the facts aren’t great. Krasnik’s sustained count skews 4‑to‑1 for the defence. Not fatal, but the pattern is visible: anything that could conceivably be walked into “Batman contamination” territory gets thrown out. He’ll allow Langford to wander; Mackary must be beyond critique.

Two, the jury is doing its best, against all odds. Six of the twelve were taking diligent notes, and all of them were paying close attention. They were uncomfortable with Roy; two of the six looked near queasy during the second half of his testimony. They could be uncomfortable with the graphic nature of the crime, but this is Gotham. Superpowered villains chop children into hand-sized pieces twice a month in this wretched city. A little sexual assault wouldn't even be a blip on the radar if Brucie Wayne hadn’t put his thumb on the scale. So, they’re uncomfortable for a different reason. He’s leaning towards them being more intuitive than others. Most people don’t like Roy if he doesn’t go out of his way to make them do so. He’s too strange, too violent, too calculating. He’s unfeeling, manipulative and unpredictable. Only a few can afford not to ignore all those red flags. Typically, they would be the people who are as dangerous as he is, if not more: Olivier, Maes, Ed, Al. Riza, in a more limited capacity. All of which is to say that, yes, the jury might very well be predisposed to be uncomfortable with him, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

What else? Langford is a snake. A well-educated, cold-blooded reptile who does his job well and has a wall built between his sense of self and what he says and does on the clock. Should Roy keep to his self-imposed limits—acting within the bounds of the law—there is nothing he could do to rattle a man like that. He could, however, rattle Collins. The man is nothing like his lawyer; his tells are so loud, a teenager could spin him up like a wind-up toy. Insults, disparaging comments, disregard. He doesn’t care about moralising, but he is sensitive to being ridiculed. Shocking.

Roy inhales a long, smooth breath. Alright. Alright. This is all alright. Nothing to worry about. He slips his eyes shut and takes stock of his body. Pulse 82, respiration slightly elevated. Morphine patch holding. Sandwich—inedible, but the apple serves; fructose is still sugar.

He sets the milk aside, fingers drumming a short cadence on the Formica—tum‑tum‑tÁ‑tum‑tum—trying to speed work the gesture into a habit. He’s not one for excess ritualisation, but his self-soothing protocols might not cut it.

***

He straightens the tailored jacket—Julian’s masterpiece—checks that the platinum lace choker sits flush against bruised throat. In the mirror‑polish of a stainless‑steel vent, he practises the expression Ms Kohli instructed would be best. Calm eyes. Relaxed mouth. Inhale—two—three—measured exhale. Shoulders straight. Straightish. He’s young and handsome and androgynous, if he doesn’t take care to compensate in the other direction. He could come across as wholly unthreatening if he only played down his intelligence.

They’ll all just have to live with their disappointment, he thinks. He’s bent himself so far backwards for these geese, he’s not going to give them a single inch more. Not a fraction of one. Clock hits 1:30. Bailiff returns, gesturing wordlessly. Roy slides the remaining sandwich half into the trash, wipes crumb‑dust from his fingertips, and follows.

***

Brucie Wayne is here—not that surprising. What is surprising is that he brought two young men with him. His sons, presumably; the steel-cut cheekbones and light blue eyes are rather unremarkable. Well, why not? Wayne comes by his promiscuous reputation only a little less honestly than Roy, and Roy got himself sterilised twice, across both worlds. Presuming that Wayne hadn’t, then his leaving a trail of blue-eyed children in his wake is fair enough.

With all that said, having children watch a trial like this is a choice. More ruthless than what Roy would have expected from a pushover like Brucie Wayne. The younger one, he can maybe understand; the kid witnessed the aftermath, he could do with some closure, one way or another. The elder one, with desert-brown skin and a tight smile, he doesn’t know what to do with.

Waynes aside, not much has changed. Collins changed his shirt, but kept the dull, boxy jacket. Attorney Langford changed his shoes. These look a fair bit more comfortable and, crucially, have a discrete two-inch heel in the back. He couldn’t look more old-money respectable if he had grown in a petri dish. Add in the dead eyes, blank smile and the neat tap-tap-tap of his cane, and the Petri dish in question gets a label Reasonable Doubt.

“Good afternoon, Mr Mustang. Glass of water before we begin?”

I have two litres of saline in me, a morphine patch on my hip and a necklace made of platinum strands thinner than human hair. What I need is a cigarette and a drink. What I need is a bullet between the eyes.

“Thank you, counsellor.” Roy takes the plastic cup, sips, and wonders if the courthouse filters for lead. Probably not. They are all probably inflicting horrible damage on their livers and kidneys.

“Splendid. Let’s refresh the basics for our jury. Your full legal name?”

“Roy Mustang.”

“Age?”

“Twenty‑two.” Aha-ha.

“Occupation?”

"Independent escort. High‑end clientele.”

Langford nods as though these answers were satisfactory entries on a grocery list. He paces—tap, pause, pivot—giving the jury time to further connect dirty profession with pretty face and has eyes of a crocodile. A gentle opening gambit: play nice with the enemy, but don’t humanise them.  Roy counts heartbeats, one, two, three; Mackary rises on the third, ready to object on something—asked and answered, maybe—but Krasnik shoots her a look and she settles.

“Mr Mustang, you testified earlier that you changed your name after arriving in Gotham. Purely cosmetic, or another reason?”

“Cosmetic.” Sort of. Aunt Chris is as much a full-blooded Xingian as Roy’s mother was. She chose Mustang because she’s a nutcase; Roy was born Roy Siolis, to Misten Siolis and Chay Siolis nee Benks, who themselves were born Li Guiying and He Ruoxi. Names, in his humble opinion, were as ephemeral and meaningful as sea foam.

“Entirely your prerogative, of course.” Cane‑tap. Smile. “And your immigration papers are in perfect order—we’re not questioning that. Merely context.”

Roy lets his expression warm a hair, to match his. Nobody is calling anyone an illegal, unwelcome alien. We’re all friends here. “Context is important, yes.”

Langford feigns surprise. The theatre lights warm; in the background, a stenographer’s keys clack like distant rain. “Capital. Now, let’s talk origins, Mr Mustang. You were born—please correct me—in Tōno, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, in ninety-five?”

Roy blinks. A ripple in the air: the first real card on the table. They dug that far? Impressive. Also, strange. “November twelfth, nineteen ninety-five, yes.”

“To Hiroshi Matsuda and Xiumei Li.”

“I must compliment you on your pronunciation, councillor,” he says, with every appearance of sincerity. He really did pronounce it alright. Better than any American had so far. Or, for that matter, Amestrian. “That is precisely correct.”

“At some point, you relocated to the city of Nanjing in the People’s Republic of China?”

“That is correct.”

“Why?”

“My mother came into substantial wealth in ’01. Remaining in Japan while sorting out the inheritance in Japan was implausible. By the time they had ironed out all the details, we had already lived in Nanjing for three years. So, they decided to stay and bought the Magnolia Hotel.”

Langford inclines his head and takes out a stack of papers. “Quite a property,” he says, as an image appears on the screen on the side. A slideshow, of sorts, showing the once-villa. “A hotel is a modest description. Some would call it an exclusive resort. You had a lake on your property, did you not?”

Roy inclines his head. For the first time, he takes a moment to sincerely congratulate himself on being thorough with his fake background. As it happens, the Magnolia Hotel was a real hotel, and it had, indeed, burned down in 2015, taking with it the owners and over two hundred victims. That’s precisely why he chose it. Making a false identity is a chore and a half, but taking over a life is a different matter altogether. Granted, Matsuda Hiroshi and Li Xiumei never had a son, but that’s beside the point. Taking over the life of a kid whose parents died in a fire spoke to him. His parents died in a car crash, but metaphorically—

“We had, yes. It was very pretty.”

“And when you were nineteen—tragically—it all burned down under mysterious circumstances?”

Roy blinks, honestly taken aback for a moment. He truly did not expect anyone to accuse him of murdering his fake, dead parents. Perhaps he should have, yeesh. “I wouldn’t call them mysterious circumstances; there was an electrical fault in the basement of the main building. The explosion was rather enormous. My parents died, along with most of the guests.”

“My condolences.”

The words drop softly as ash. Jury foreman winces; the murmuring in the audience gallery has grown both solemn and energetic. To his credit, Langford neither rushes nor gloats—he’s painting with pastel grief, not neon scandal.

“Thank you.”

“You were present for that fire?”

Metaphorically.

“I arrived after the fact. They were already gone.”

Langford retrieves two charred photographs mounted on foam board—the same stills of a ruined, devastated piece of land that Roy had chosen for the fake insurance claim he pretended to have filed. He easels them facing the jurors, then turns slightly, blocking Mackary’s line of sight.

“Would you agree a loss of that magnitude can leave… enduring psychological effects?”

Well played. The implication of a fortunate windfall is there; no need to outright state that the only heir of an enormous fortune happened to be off-site when it had burned down.

“I won’t dispute the literature, counsellor.”

“So when you later chose—entirely within your rights, of course—to embrace both a nomadic lifestyle and offer, ah, companionship services, were those decisions driven by practical needs? Such as a lack of funds, perhaps?”

Well spun. “I was and still am independently wealthy, if I understood your question correctly. I was not forced into the escorting business.”

“So you chose it voluntarily?” Langford starts pacing again, taking long, seemingly idle steps up and down the podium. “You chose to have sex with strangers for money—because you felt like it?”

Silence folds around the question. Roy tastes iron behind his molars. Several answers present themselves for inspection, and he refuses each. Easy. Focus.

“I can’t parse every influence on my life, sir. Grief was one of many.”

Langford accepts the ambiguity with a brief, empty smile. He doesn’t even have the good grace to look smug, the worm. He turns, signals an assistant. A projector whirs; a map of East Asia blooms on the wall, dotted with red pins—Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Busan, Macau.

“Between the ages of nineteen and twenty‑one, you visited seventeen cities across four countries. Club openings, gambling junkets, yacht galas—am I correct?”

Roy flicks a glance at the red constellation. Wrong by five cities, but close enough to be unnerving. “Having independent wealth and a well-paying job is conducive to travel. I also happen to enjoy it.”

“Indeed.” Langford taps the cane on Macau. “And you met clients along the way?”

“I met people,” Roy says. “Some, I accepted as clients.”

He hears Mackary shift; she’ll object if he’s boxed into pandering. He keeps the edges blunt.

“People like Mr Qiáng in Shenzhen?” Langford lifts a laminated Weibo post: Roy—well, a blurry silhouette with his jawline--lounging poolside beside a greying older man on the other end of fifty. Caption garbled through machine translation: “My lucky charm.”

Roy smothers the urge to laugh. He doesn’t recognise the young man. “That is not me.”

A hum from the panel: is it? Could be. The seed doesn’t need water; doubt germinates in the dark.

Langford shrugs as if misidentification were an honest mistake. “Maybe not. The internet is unreliable—still, our jurors see how a jet‑set narrative follows you.”

He strolls closer, lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Mr Mustang, have you ever sought professional help for lingering trauma?”

I sought the sweet, all-encompassing embrace of genocide. Does that count?

“Recently, yes. One session.”

“But until this year, no counselling, no therapy?”

Bless. Bless you. And this is supposed to be—justice? This is the type of thing you subject alleged victims of sexual assault to? Of attempted murder?

“I believed I was managing.” A truth shaped to mislead.

“By which you mean high-risk promiscuity?”

Objection? None rises. Judge Krasnik observes, expression primed for impartial scorn. Roy feels his thoughts smooth over, as his heart rate first spikes, then slows into a familiar, soldier's cadence. Attorney Langford gives him a strange look, but forges on. Brave. Not many people, in his experience, would be so even-tempered when faced with a state alchemist who is visibly keying up for a spot of indiscriminate slaughter.

“I enjoyed social settings, counsellor. That isn’t a crime.”

Langford’s smile widens a millimetre—the first glint of teeth.

“Not at all. It does, however, establish a baseline. Ladies and gentlemen,”—he half‑turns to the box—“before Mr Collins ever entered the picture, Mr Mustang had grief, globe‑trotting dissociation, and a profession that places stress on body and psyche. Keep that context in mind.”

Roy feels the jury’s eyes weigh him. An exotic bird who plucked his own feathers, complaining now of drafts.

Langford segues, almost gentle. “Final point in this segment, sir. You testified that your current symptoms—insomnia, derealisation—stem from the June attack. Would you concede that those same symptoms often accompany chronic lifestyle stressors?”

“Yes,” Roy says, steady. “And Mister Collins’ knife in my gut made them worse.”

A low ripple; someone coughs. Roy’s fingers itch, thoughts cold-cold-cold. A little fire will do wonders at warming them up. Just a spark; two contained bursts of flame. Roy might very well walk free; they don’t have alchemy in this world. It won’t show on any of their tests.

Langford bows fractionally, the victor of round one. “Fascinating. Your Honour, I would like to call a brief recess to give Mr Mustang some time to gather his composure. I understand situations like these are stressful for people in his state of mind.”

Judge Krasnik clears his throat. “Denied, Mr Langford. You may proceed to your next line of inquiry.”

Round two begins with the soft squeal of a mannequin’s plastic shoulder socket. Roy inhales a long breath and tries to pretend that he is but a toothless, twenty-something socialite. It's doubtful that anyone believes it, but there's nothing for it. 

Chapter Text

Langford glidesh to the lectern the way a shark glides through water—slow, unhurried, never unsure. The silence is, if anything, a balm. Roy goes through a quick focusing routine, gives up, then focuses on the councillor’s shoes. Hand‑stitched. Leather. Expensive.

Well, he thinks, mind hazy in all the ways, it’s not focused on the artery pulsing in his neck. It seems like Roy isn’t the only one doing unsavoury things for the thrill instead of money.

“Mr Mustang,” Langford says, pronunciation as crisp as his class signifiers would suggest, “the photographs marked State’s Exhibits 23 through 29 show minimal bruising on your wrists. A faint pressure line, no broken skin. How long were you cuffed?”

A bold choice. The few sounds in the gallery drop down to an even zero. “Roughly an hour and a half to two hours.”

Langford pivots an enlarged photo toward the jury. High‑definition honesty: neat red ovals around each wristbone, nothing dramatic. “You made no effort to pull free?”

“On the contrary, I invested significant effort,” Roy says. His tone would be considered polite to anyone who had never met any of his sisters. To those who have, hearing Di speak out of Roy’s mouth would be as loud a warning sign as they would need. “My attempts were hindered by the sad fact that your client had dislocated both my shoulders and bound my arms backwards. Leverage wasn’t on offer.”

A corner of Langford’s brow lifts exactly one millimetre. “So you lie there, compliant, until help arrives.”

ADA Mackary rises sharply. "Objection. Argumentative, mischaracterises prior testimony."

Roy waits—but Judge Krasnik waves her down. "Overruled. Witness may answer."

Shocking.

“I lie there, dying,” Roy corrects. “Subtle distinction, I agree, but an important one.”

“Deflecting with humour,” the attorney says, making a note on his notepad. “A common occurrence in people with Mr Mustang’s background.”

"Objection!" Mackary snaps, voice flaring. "Counsel isn't qualified to diagnose or comment on the witness's psychological profile."

Judge Krasnik's gaze cuts briefly toward Langford, irritation visible. "Sustained. Jury will disregard counsel’s commentary."

Langford inclines his head, unbothered. "Withdrawn." He taps the photo with a silver pen. “If I may refocus your attention to the matter at hand, you have sustained no torn ligaments, no radial fractures, no petechiae. Wouldn’t that suggest less force than you describe?”

“It suggests efficient force. Silk cuffs leave fewer marks than iron.” He pauses for effect. “Granted, Mr Collins favours steel, but he makes sure to position them with care before moving on to his primary entertainment. Rape, disembowelment, the usual, if painfully predictable choices of would-be serial killers.”

The grimace that passes over Collins' face—maddened animal rage—is less discrete, this time. Poor little psychopath doesn’t like his ego taking damage.

Langford tries to have the testimony struck, but the judge, unexpectedly, shuts him down.

“The witness is yours, Counsellor. I won’t have you tailor the record because you don’t like answers to the questions you’ve asked.”

Round two goes to Roy, though the attorney’s expression never flickers.

***

A red‑tabbed folder appears in Langford’s hands. The courtroom temperature rises a degree as he opens it.

“Mr Mustang, you told us you ‘never engage in BDSM.’ Yet the State provided images”—a remote click—“that suggest otherwise.”

Grainy phone photos from the Cobalt’s balcony bloom on the projector: Roy, shirtless, kissing someone whose face blurs with motion; another hand in his hair, champagne bottle catching neon. He looks happy in the picture. Young.

Nevertheless—hair‑pulling, multiple partners, public venue. The narrative is clunky, yes, but it doesn’t need to be elegant. All he needs is to smear Roy’s name.

“Do you call that BDSM‑adjacent?” Langford asks, soft.

“I call it Tuesday,” Roy replies. A ripple of laughter skitters through the benches; the judge’s gavel lifts, considers, settles again.

Next slide: a still of a website selling erotic equipment. A black rubber ball‑gag studded with spikes that the text underneath it loudly—falsely—calls decorative. Langford lets it hang there.

“Devices like this are sold legally to consenting adults. Isn’t it plausible you asked for something like it and—intoxicated—forgot?”

“Rohypnol does many things,” Roy answers, fingers relaxed on the witness rail. The boldness of the question shocks him out of the mounting rage. “Asking for and accepting the application of barbed surgical steel isn’t on the list.”

Langford presses. “Nevertheless, intoxication clouds memory. And here you are, asking this jury to believe it’s out of the question that this was a pre-negotiated, consensual event that you later regretted?”

Roy, very carefully, doesn’t laugh in the sly old worm’s face. “Negotiated play relies on safe words—spoken or gestural. I couldn’t speak—barbed gag—and I couldn’t gesture—steel cuffs. The only plan in the room belonged to the man with the knife.”

“It’s your words against his, however, and you’ve testified that you’ve never engaged in BDSM activities.” He gestures towards the lurid photo, still hanging on the easel. “And yet, we see that you have, and often enough, that you refer to it as just another Tuesday. I highly doubt the jury will be incautious enough to confuse glibness with sincerity.”

"Objection," Mackary interjects firmly. "Counsel is improperly testifying and vouching for the jury's perception."

"Sustained," Judge Krasnik snaps, sharp. "Keep your opinions to closing, Counsellor. Jury will disregard."

Langford offers a vague, unapologetic nod. "My apologies, Your Honour. I will rephrase. Do you expect the jury to disregard the fact that the evidence provided by the state contradicts your testimony?“

Roy’s lips twitch. “I like having my hair pet,” he says, leaning forward. “I’m a tactile man, and my lovers tell me I am at my most beautiful when I’m pampered. That said, I would go through some effort to limit my interactions with anyone who told me there are material similarities between that—” He gestures to the still, eyes catching on it against his will. He looks like a kid, any kid. He looks younger than Elicia. “—And the photos provided by the medical professionals who examined me after my rescue.”

“How convenient,” the lawyer says, then pivots, cane tucked behind one knee, and produces a fresh binder—blue tab this time. He lifts a single glossy board: a blown‑up bank statement. Columns highlighted in neon yellow trace three months of activity.

A bar‑graph inset shows a dead‑flat baseline—then, the week after the first local‑news blurb, a spike/

“Let’s examine incentives,” Langford begins, voice a velvet scalpel. “These deposits—eleven separate payments—occurred after Mr Wayne’s hospital visit was publicised.”

He taps the spike. Thunk.

“Total, a hundred and thirty‑six thousand four hundred dollars in twelve days, correct?”

Roy lets his eyes flick sideways, utterly bored. “I won’t dispute the numbers, assuming you got them from my assistants. I don’t quite follow such things.”

“Where did the funds originate?”

“Online sales of jewellery.” Edges of a smile. “My physical therapist, Nurse Ross, was worried for my mental well-being. We agreed on a compromise solution of a hobby, after the attempt at therapy didn’t work out. Turns out, I’m good with my hands.” He lets his smile deepen. If only you knew what Roy’s hands are good for. “Who knew?”

Langford makes an impersonal hum and flips to the next foam board: a timeline.

July 18 — Publicist April Suarez on retainer
July 23 — Website mustang.com registered
July 24 — First ‘Frolic in Filigree’ cuff posted to Instagram
July 25 — Bruce Wayne tweets the link
July 26 — Daily‑Gotham front‑page profile: “Red‑Carpet Victim”

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Langford purrs. “Hospital bed today, famous artist tomorrow. All catalysed by Gotham’s favourite benefactor.”

He strolls toward the jury, lowering his voice to confessional volume.

“Ladies and gentlemen, picture the headline pitch: Beautiful stranger brutalised, Batman rescues, Bruce Wayne swoops in. Our witness becomes a cause célèbre overnight—book deals, branded chokers, prime‑time interviews. Mr Collins? A necessary villain in the pilot episode.”

The phrase lands; two jurors glance at Collins, almost apologetic. Interesting.

Langford snaps the newspaper front page onto the projector: Roy—pallid, bandaged, couture blanket artfully draped—being wheeled past paparazzi. The headline screams RED‑CARPET VICTIM in tabloid crimson.

“Did you authorise this photo shoot, Mr Mustang?”

“I left the care of the hospital before they felt wise to release me, when the press swarmed the hospital. We decided to leave by a back entrance,” Roy answers. “Hospital security said the front was safer. Reporters disagreed.”

Smatter of laughter. Langford lets it fade. “You didn’t discourage the coverage afterwards—hired publicist, social media, product drops?”

“I didn’t encourage a knife in my stomach either, yet here we are.”

A few jurors stiffen; Judge Krasnik’s brow twitches, but Langford presses on, unbothered. “Tell the jury,” he says, voice silky‑sad, “isn’t it true you’re less a survivor and more an entrepreneur? That Frank Collins was collateral damage in a strategic campaign to orbit Bruce Wayne’s star?”

Roy—calms. His eyes find the Waynes, by and large against his will. Trying to orbit the star of, apparently, the one honourable man in this cesspit would have been the smartest thing Roy had ever done. Miles smarter than anything he actually did, of course, but that’s besides the point.

Several people followed his eyes to their target, and the whispering hikes up to an agitated buzz. That Wayne’s sons sit stone-faced and visibly furious doesn’t do much to cast doubt on the implied connection. In contrast, their father’s mask is flawless, even now. Perhaps especially now.

Thankfully, before he has to think of an answer that doesn’t include his thoughts about how Attorney Langford should engage in sexual congress and with whom, Ms Mackary is on her feet.

“Objection—harassment and character assassination. Counsel insinuates criminal motives without proof.”

Judge Krasnik sighs. “Counsel, sidebar.”

They cluster at the bench; the white‑noise machine hisses to drown them out. Roy reads lips anyway.

Mackary: “Speculative money‑grab theory. Irrelevant prejudicial garbage.”

Langford: “Goes to bias, motive to fabricate. Legitimate cross.”

The judge massages his temple; he’s caught between anti‑vigilante bias and fear of either headlines—doubtful—or Bruce Wayne’s wrath—significantly more likely.

Finally, the gavel taps—soft, resigned.

“Limited inquiry permitted. Two questions only, Counsellor. Stay off the shoestring conspiracies.”

Langford inclines his head, shark polite. “As the Court wishes.” He faces Roy again, every gesture trimmed to exact courtroom‑legal length. “Mr Mustang, did Bruce Wayne—or any agent of his—promise you financial or social benefit before you agreed to testify?”

“No,” Roy says, letting the word drop like lead. “Nor after.”

“Have you, directly or indirectly, solicited Mr Wayne’s help to promote your work?”

Bless. Roy leans forward, pillowing his jaw in his palm, elbow planted on the wooden platform. “I don’t solicit, Counsellor,” he says. “Broadly speaking, my work speaks for itself. More precisely, while Mr Wayne’s attention is worth many things, evisceration is not among them.”

Langford opens his mouth—closes it. Those were his two bullets; Judge Krasnik’s finger hovers over the gavel.

The attorney nods once, austerely. “One final question, before we wrap up this line of questioning. You deny BDSM, yet you wear a collar in court. Symbolic, is it not?”

"Objection!"  Ms Mackary says, voice sharp with frustration. "Relevance, Your Honour, and beyond the scope permitted."

"Overruled," Judge Krasnik says wearily, motioning Langford to continue. "Answer briefly, Mr Mustang."

Roy’s fingertips brush the choker Julian forced on him. It costs more than his first sports car back in Amestris. A slow smile unfurls. “Symbolic, yes. It symbolises money. By my inexpert eye, it’s roughly the price of your shoes, Counsellor. Shall we compare receipts?”

True laughter bursts, sharp and human, before the gavel barks twice. Langford’s nostrils flare—first honest emotion he’s shown—then disappear behind silk‑screen professionalism. The red folder snaps shut.

“It is refreshing to note that your alleged trauma hasn’t impacted your sense of humour, sir.”

“Well, they do call it the gallows humour, Counsellor, and the tone and tenor of your questioning does confuse the matter of who, precisely, is on trial.” Roy closes his eyes and inhales a breath. You’ve had him on the defensive, and you blew it on nothing, you incompetent fool—He exhales and refocuses as best he can. “My apologies, sir. That was inappropriate.”

“I will excuse it,” Langford says, comfortably back in his smug eel performance. “Moving on—” He wheels in a second easel: whiteboard veneer, electric‑blue timeline running left to right like the pulse of a cardiogram. “—To the matter of forensic evidence. Let’s chart the journey.” He uncaps a marker, lips set in a sweet, helpful smile.

“22:43 — Patrol officers Bagley and Chen seize the knife, cuffs, gag left behind by the vigilante called Batman

22:47 — Detective Byrne arrives, transfers evidence to a…” he prints the words in large loopy caps, “…paper gift bag from the hotel minibar.”

Laughter scatters through the gallery; Judge Krasnik raps once for quiet. Roy exhales through his nose. Yes, Byrne had mentioned that embarrassment—the kits were still in the police van.

Langford smiles, keeps writing.

“22:59 — Detective Byrne hands said bag to EMT Rivera.

23:07 — Rivera places it on the ambulance floor, next to an open bio‑hazard bin.

23:28 — CSU seals items in appropriate packaging.”

He steps back, marker tucked like a baton. “Four humans, one masked vigilante, two unsecured locations. Do I have the long and short of it?”

"Objection," Ms Mackary cuts in. "Compound question, assumes facts not fully established."

"Overruled," Judge Krasnik says, a note of resignation heavy in his tone. "Witness may clarify if needed."

“No,” Roy says. His tone is neutral; in his head, he adds plus Robin and the half‑dozen vultures who swooped in to take photographs.

Langford nods, as if Roy’s agreement were the punchline. “Hypothetical, Mr Mustang: between hotel paper bag and CSU seals, could foreign material—dust, fibres, DNA—be introduced?”

“I’m not a lab tech,” Roy answers, voice even. “But it’s possible, yes.”

“Possible,” Langford echoes, in a beautifully sardonic tone. “Isn’t it precisely because of this possibility that police are so careful to keep the chain of custody pristine and beyond scrutiny?”

Yes, yes. He swallows a sigh. Dull, dull, dull. “To my best understanding, certainly.”

“So, correct me if I’m wrong, we have evidence handled by a costumed civilian who answers to no oversight, who vanishes into the night. Anything he touches is—” he flicks the board “—fruit of the Bat‑tree.”

An audible ripple rolls through the benches; someone actually whispers, “Get outta here.” Judge Krasnik’s gavel drops not to chastise but to steady the floorboards.

Roy watches the metaphor take root: bat‑tree, poisoned fruit, systemic rot. Clever. Inaccurate, but clever.

Langford changes tempo. The chain‑of‑custody board stays lit behind him—background radiation of doubt—while he opens a fresh accordion file. He fans three stamped envelopes like prize cards. “Exhibits 48‑A through C—certified responses from Nanjing University, Beijing Normal, and Tokyo Waseda.”

He reads, voice faux‑grim:

“We have no record of a student named Matsuda Raito…”

“No enrollment under Mustang, Roy…”

“Applicant file not located…”

He sets the letters on the rail so the jury can taste the ink.

“Mr Mustang, you testified to completing a business‑administration degree in 2016—yes?”

“Yes.” He keeps his expression blank. Too blank? He softens the edges, allows a flicker of fatigue to leak through. How exasperated should he be about them not finding his fake records? He planted those fair and square, and did some clever, Truth-gifted hacking to make it workably water-tight.

“And a semester of graduate economics?”

“Correct.”

Langford raises an eyebrow, as if Roy has volunteered the rope for his own hanging. “Care to explain the registrar discrepancies?”

“I am glad you ask, Counsellor,” he says, a little waspishly. “I enrolled under my mother’s family name, Li. Moreover, records in China list surname first; your search parameters missed it.”

“Perhaps,” Langford repeats, tone implying unlikely. He pulls a new sheet: bold police‑station header.

“This is your Chinese residence registration, yes? Lists surname as Matsuda, not Li. Which is it today?”

Mackary rises again, increasingly terse. Bless her, she’s spitting mad. “Asked and answered."

"Overruled," the judge clips off, barely looking up. "The witness will answer."

Roy lets his shoulders sag a millimetre—visual fatigue cue number two. “Today? It’s Mustang. Names can change.” And how dare you deride Roy for doing extra work to make his story more believable? Having the same name across all his documents would be more suspicious, not less, if he had changed it several times already. “The fire destroyed originals; much had to be reissued. Paperwork isn’t sacred scripture, Counsellor.”

A few jurors jot that verbatim. Could read either courageous or slippery.

Langford stacks the unanswered letters, lets the silence thicken. “In earlier testimony,” he continues after a long, tense moment, “you couldn’t recall the EMT who first treated you—true?”

“I was in a lot of pain.”

“You couldn’t recall the licence plate of the ambulance.”

He sighs. “I was bleeding out, Counsellor.”

“You couldn’t recall the full name of your ‘high‑school friend’ who allegedly visited you in Shanghai.”

Roy tightens his grip on the witness‑box rail. He does remember her—he invented her—but now is not the time to be defensive or uncharacteristically free with information. “I don’t understand your question, Counsellor. What friend are you referring to?”

Langford spreads his hands toward the jury. “Memory fails when inconvenient, yet remains crystalline for Batman heroics and my client’s alleged threats. Curious selectivity, don’t you think?”

“I don’t.”

“So, the past is blurry; a story shrouded in convenient gaps. The present is a performance, a socialite, an escort, a wealthy foreigner, a tragic victim. What about the future?” He slides three neat cards from the folder. On the first card is a bar chart of social‑media mentions—ROY MUSTANG SURVIVOR spiking like a seismograph the day the story broke. The second card is a print-out of the bank statement, charting the rapid growth of sales. The third card is the screenshot of a magazine website — “RED‑CARPET VICTIM: Gotham’s New Darling”.

Langford fans them for the jury. “Isn’t it true, Mr Mustang, that you need this trial to stay relevant? That every headline, every sympathetic puff piece sells another product?”

“Objection!” ADA Mackary is on her feet. “Harassment, no probative value.”

Judge Krasnik’s brow ticks. “Overruled. Narrow inquiry allowed. Answer the question, Mr Mustang.”

Roy’s molars meet. Relevance? Money? Him? “I didn’t ask for donations and won’t do so in the future. If the public finds my work valuable for reasons beyond their look and make, I can’t control that, nor would I want to.”

Langford’s eyebrow says touché, but shaky. “Last question, sir—and answer carefully.” Beat. “If Batman hadn’t crashed through that window—if the Bat‑symbol never touched your name—do you honestly believe Gotham would be hanging on your every word today?”

Mackary moves instinctively, then halts mid-rise, sensing the futility. The judge’s eyes slide toward her, waiting—but the ADA sits back slowly, knowing the objection won't matter now.

Roy answers alone, the echoes of his words bitter and futile against Langford’s carefully orchestrated silence, twelve jurors leaning toward an answer that he can’t provide. Fortunately, life has taught him that the thing to do with tricky knots is to cut them.

“If the Dark Knight hadn’t intervened, I would be a corpse, Counsellor, and Mr Collins would be carving his next victim. Fame doesn’t factor into survival.”

It lands. Not all the way, and the damage already dealt is neither forgotten nor small. Langford’s smile never twitches. He bows—draw acknowledged—then turns away as though Roy’s words weigh nothing at all. “No further questions, Your Honour.”

The judge raps the gavel, sharp as a bone crack. “Court stands recessed until tomorrow. Jury, remember your instructions—”

Lights flare, bleaching the room. Bailiff’s hand clamps Roy’s elbow, but for a heartbeat, he can’t rise. He’s held in place by the weight of the question, the unspoken verdict thrumming beneath it: Would anyone care if not for the Bat?

No. Not anymore.

**