Sophie looked over at him in the darkness of her bedroom, saw his profile as he looked up at the ceiling. Once again Aunt Carol wasn't home, either working or doing whatever she did when she wasn't home...either way she came home reeking of cigarettes and looking haggard and too caught up in her own thoughts to notice Sophie or the boy she hid in her room almost every night.

"I've had enough" he growled, in a voice that was deepening with puberty, "I can't take it anymore. Next time...next time...I'm gonna kill him."

Sophie felt her heart seize in her chest for a minute, but then she thought of all the times they had walked to school with bruises around his eyes, on his face, either of his arms in a cast on any given week. She remembered him climbing through her window just minutes before cradling his ribs, and she was filled with anger.

"I'll help, I want to help too," she whispered harshly.

Victor turned to her in the darkness, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

"No, this is something I have to do on my own," and he sounded like an adult, like a man.

Sophie shivered and pulled the covers tighter around her shoulders, ashamed at the relief that flooded through her. She felt his gaze on her as she nodded, but as they did most nights, they just shared the calm silence. Whether it be tomorrow or the next day, Sophie knew in her gut he meant it this time, and things would never be the same.

Chapter One

Sophie Summers was a Registered Nurse at Gotham General, working three to four nights a week in the Emergency Department. She'd lived in Gotham her whole life, and had been working in the ED for four years, so Sophie figured she'd seen and heard about all the kinds of violence there was to experience, considering the cesspool of crime that Gotham was.

Since her Aunt Carol had died from lung cancer ten years ago, right about the time she was to graduate high school, Sophie had been on her own.

Sophie had been abandoned at a shopping mall by her mother when she was five, and although Sophie couldn't remember her mother's face, she still remembered her mother's voice telling her to wait for her in that spot until she came back. The night security guard found Sophie still in the same spot, legs shaking from holding her bladder in check. Police, child protective services and a short lived stint in an orphanage led up to Sophie being reluctantly claimed by her mother's sister. When Aunt Carol had died the year Sophie turned seventeen, Sophie had pursued legal action to become emancipated and the government jumped at the chance to not become responsible for one more mouth to feed and house for a year, her emancipation was granted. Because she had done nothing but work, Carol Summers' bank accounts held a nice sum of money to pay off her medical bills and with the sale of the house Sophie had enough to put herself through college and live in a run down studio apartment by her college. Aunt Carol's house hadn't been much to look at, and really had served no purpose but to put a roof over Sophie's head for the last twelve years, so she had no problems saying good-bye to it. However her gaze had lingered on the ghost of a house next door, with crime tape still roping off the front yard and crossed over the front door.

Sophie had placed her last letter to him in the mailbox that day, although he had stopped writing her at least a year and a half prior. As she lifted the red flag on the mailbox, she blew a kiss to the ramshackle house next door, to the boy who had used to live in it, the boy who for a short time, had made her feel not so alone. She wished him blessings, she wished him a better future than the past that had nearly beat the life out of him, and she sent her thanks to that boy, Victor Zsasz, and then walked away and never looked back.

Now Sophie finished giving report to the night nurse Tina and eyed the clock as she emptied her locker, only thirty minutes over her shift, and considering the multiple GSWs that had come in and the police reports that she had to file, that wasn't too bad. She shrugged on her zip-up and shoved her small purse under her armpit before clocking out and walking out the door of the ED.

Doctor Romalotti was standing on the curbside smoking, looking up at the skyline, one hand in his lab coat. Sophie was fond of the middle-aged man who had more patience than most physicians and had taken her under his wing when she'd been a new grad thrown into the fray. She slid up beside him and looked up at the sky next to him, "What's up, Doc?" she laughed and elbowed his side.

He looked over at her and his tired face curled partially into a smile. It had been a long day for everyone.

"The smog isn't so bad right now," he said looking back up at the sky, "You can actually see a few stars...unless those are just a few more lights from buildings."

Sophie nodded, "When are you gonna retire, Doctor Rome? Go retire out to the country, and then you can really see some stars."

"Are you trying to tell me I'm old? Nah, retiring isn't for me. I have too much debt anyway. Gladys took damn near my balls in the divorce, and well, I'm prone to my vices, gambling here and there."

Sophie rolled her eyes so he could see, but she knew quite well the doctor's vices. Sophie had hard no work romance rule, which had quickly snuffed out the interest that Romalotti had in her, but his straying eyes had found a CNA and a few other nurses, but for whatever reason, his wife had finally grown tired of his straying ways and left him. Sophie was glad that their professional relationship hadn't suffered because of his ways since she really wasn't that good at making and keeping friends.

"You better run off and get to sleep, enjoy a few days off," he closed off, snuffing out his cigarette under his shoe.

"You need to get some sleep too, old man," she chided, "Maybe start on getting over a few vices," she teased.

He scoffed and waved her off, "I'm too old to stop now," and they laughed. A shiny black car slammed on its brakes right in front of the hospital and a door flew open. A tall, lithe bald man stepped out of the car, his shoes shining under the red fluorescent lighting of the ED sign. The man adjusted his suit and rolled his shoulders as he moved forward in their direction.

"Francis," the man spoke, nodding at Doctor Romalotti, "We have need of your services."

Doctor Rome frowned and his eyes glanced at Sophie before he stepped in front of her, in-between her and the man's line of sight. "I still have a few hours left on my shift, can't it wait?"

"He waits for no one," the man said, his voice unforgiving.

Romalotti opened his mouth and closed it a few times before he turned to Sophie, "Sophie, go home, now," he snapped at her lowly and pushed her away with hand. It was then Sophie noted how many more wrinkles he had around his eyes, the age spots that were beginning to pop up on his hands, ageing too soon from all of those vices of his.

Anger filled her at his trembling hands, and Sophie stepped forward, hands curled into fists at her sides, "If you need emergency help, you can go inside the hospital and sign in, and wait your turn like everyone else," she snapped.

Doctor Romalotti made a strangled sound in his throat and grabbed for her arm to pull her behind him.

"I'm...I'm so sorry, this is a co-worker of mine. She didn't mean...she doesn't know, just, just go Sophie, it's fine, I know this man, it's fine,"

But the bald man in the nice suit had already moved forward, and Sophie noted he moved like a predator, swift and sure, with muscles rippling under his suit, evident even in the darkness of a Gotham night. Sophie stood firm as she had numerous times before in the face of drug-crazed individuals, as the man stepped up to tower in front of her, eyes dark as they flickered over her blinked when she realized he didn't have eyebrows...no hair on his face at all except his eyelashes, and it was weird and disconcerting and threw Sophie off. His fingers snapped out and flicked her badge, still on the front of her scrubs. "She's a nurse, and if she doesn't want to leave you, then she can join you," the man growled, and with a quick movement, hard, bruising fingers were around her elbow.

"Don't touch me," Sophie snapped blinking back to herself, and bringing up her foot, slammed her heel into the toe of his nice shiny shoe. The man didn't wince, didn't move away, but his grip became tighter and he growled low in his throat in warning.

"I'll go, just let her go," Francis Romalotti pleaded, moving to the car where another man had stepped out and was waiting. Sophie tried wrenching her arm away and found herself pulled tightly to the man's hard side.

"She's a feisty one, Dr. Romalotti, you're new squeeze?" the man who held her hissed with only slight amusement and then moved with her to the car.

"He's my friend," Sophie growled back at him, her green eyes flashing in anger.

"Well you're about to help your friend pay off his debt," her captor grumbled and shoved her inside the car. Dr. Romalotti followed her in, and sat beside her as the bald man folded his tall frame into the car and the door was shut behind him.

The windows were blacked out, but Sophie could bet that even if she could see out the glass people would still be walking with their heads down, unwilling to help, afraid to risk danger to themselves, the Gotham way.

The lurched into traffic and sped away, and Sophie glared at the two men across them, wishing harm and sending venom through the air at the bald man who glared back at her in the darkness.

"Sophie," Romalotti sighed, face in his hands, before he sighed once again and whipped out his cell phone.

"This is Dr. Romalotti, I've had something come up, if you need me, just call Spencer in, he owes me one," the doctor she thought she knew said into the phone and then snapped his phone closed. He then turned to her, a hardness in his eyes, "You're gonna keep that smart-aleckness of yours in check, your head and eyes down, and do what I tell you to. I appreciate that you wanted to help me, but now you're gonna have to listen to me."

"What have you gotten yourself into?" Sophie growled at him, but hugged her purse tight to her chest and stayed still.

After many twists and turns and what seemed like forever, they stopped and were shoved out of the car. They had stopped in front of a rundown building by the waterfront, but when they were led into the building it was filled with medical equipment and tools. Sophie blinked as she adjusted to the lights inside the building.

"Wash up," the bald man ordered them, and Doctor Romalotti moved to a sink like he'd done this all before. Sophie watched the bald man go to the back of the room where a man was moaning on a table and clutching his side. She shrugged out of her sweater, and removed her badge so no one else could read her title and her name. Tightening the honey blond hair in her ponytail, she eyed all of the guns on the hips of the men around her, before she followed Romalotti's lead and scrubbed in.

"You owe debts to the mob?" she growled under her breath at him.

"I never said I was perfect," he snapped back at her, "If you behave yourself you might just get out of this alive,"

"I was just trying to help an old man from being kidnapped and bullied, how was I to know that this was a previous arrangement?" she responded and they moved to the back of the building. Finding boxes of gloves, she and Francis gloved up before moving the man and unbuttoning his shirt, finding their patient to be a bloody mess and the imitation of his left side being swiss cheese.

The Doctor pointed her to a drawer and they began working, with Sophie mostly administering fluids and medications and finding surgical tools while Romalotti dug out bullets and assessed the extent of the damage. All the while Sophie was aware of the bald man intermittently prowling around them or sitting off to the side, and she felt his gaze on her like a heavy weight on her shoulders.

Hours later found them stitching the man up and Romalotti determining the patient no longer needed fluids. Sophie wasn't sure what the man had done, but considering his line of work, she took a small measure of glee in ripping out the IV line and slapping on a piece of gauze and tape to staunch the blood flow.

"What do I do with all of this?" Sophie asked Romalotti as the doctor peeled off his gloves and moved to wash up.

"Just throw it away over there," the bald man spoke, suddenly behind her, "We have more, it will be replaced."

Sophie jumped away and glared at him over her shoulder before moving to gather up everything carefully and throw it away as two other men pulled their patient off the table and out of the building, stumbling and moaning.

"They're gonna pull out those stitches," Sophie warned, watching them go.

The bald man had moved to the other side of their makeshift surgical table and had leaned up against a counter and shrugged.

"Is there anymore?" Romalotti asked, coming up next to Sophie.

The bald man nodded, and gestured two other men forward, one with a head laceration and the other with a bullet hole clean through his arm.

Sophie sighed loudly in exasperation as Romalotti requested coffee for both of them.

"What do you want?" the bald man asked.

"Black for me," Romalotti answered, already gloving up.

"A white mocha, with a side of freedom," Sophie griped, also changing up gloves and moving to take the wadded up shirt away from her next patient's head.

The bald man made a sound in the back of his throat and then gestured at someone else who left, presumably to get their coffee.

After about thirty stitches the coffee arrived, and Sophie sent her patient on his way before washing up and grabbing her cup. Romalotti was finishing with his patient as Sophie found a seat and sat, holding her cup between her hands and staring at the floor. Her hands were shaking, so she gripped the warm cup tighter and tried to think of what the hell she was gonna do now.

"Alright, let's get out of here," the bald man's now familiar voice commanded, and everyone started moving out.

"C'mon Sophie," Romalotti hissed, and pulled her up, but her legs were shaky and she couldn't.

"Give me a minute," she breathed and fought the urge to put her head between her knees.

"Go on Doctor, I've got our little nurse here," the bald man commanded, and pushed Francis out the door. The bald man moved around the room and shut the lights off that hadn't been visible from outside. He moved in the darkness like he could see still as clear as day, and then he was in-front of her.

"The coffee isn't going to do you any good if you don't drink it, now come on, stand up."

She shot him a glare to where she thought his face might be, before taking a deep breath and standing up. She felt his hand go to her elbow, firm, but not bruising like before and she snatched up her sweater and purse before he led her out the door into the world again, where the sun hadn't yet risen.

Sophie and Francis were ushered back into the car where she took her first sip, and was surprised to find a good cup of coffee in her hands.

"Now where can we drop you off, little nurse?" the bald man asked.

"In front of the hospital, where you took me," she snapped back, tiredly.

He nodded, and tapped on the glass behind him that separated their part of the car from the front.

Sophie focused on the coffee in her hands and drinking it, and before she knew it they were stopping, and the door was opening.

The bald man stepped out first, and then the other men in the car ushered her out.

Sophie breathed in the cold, city air and the red sign of the ED was a welcome familiar sight.

"What do we do with you now, Nurse Sophie?" the bald man asked at her side.

She flinched, he knew her name, probably heard the doctor saying it as they had talked in the car, maybe when he'd been giving her orders in the makeshift clinic?

"I can keep my mouth shut," she muttered, "Please just let me go home."

"Hmm," he walked around her, circling, and she shuddered, holding her sweater and purse in one arm, the coffee in her other hand.

"Just let her go, Victor," Doctor Romalotti muttered, now out of the car.

"The least we can do is pay her a fee for her help," the bald man almost purred, and Sophie shuddered again.

"I don't want your money, please, just let me go," she said, eyes on the cement, fighting tears.

"Just take it Sophie, that way you're even," Romalotti said, but he sounded far away to her ears.

Suddenly Sophie's hand was in a large, dry hand and it was taking away the coffee cup and putting a wad of bills into her hand. Sophie's head snapped up and she blinked away tears, "I don't want your money!" her voice cracked.

"Take it," the bald man said sternly, her eyes meeting his, and his hairless face was impassive and closed off, but his eyes were on her unbidden tears, rolling down her face.

"Sophie Summers, " the Doctor exclaimed exasperated, and she whirled on him.

"Shut up! Stop saying my name so carelessly!" she snapped at him, and chastened, Romalotti stepped back from her.

The bald man was still beside her, and she turned to him, head down.

"Can I go now?" she mumbled.

Silence was her answer.

"Well, can I ?" she pressed again, and looked up at him.

His face was emotionless as he looked at her, "You can go home now, Sophie Summers," he answered finally and Sophie walked away, fast and with her head down, shoving the wad of cash into her purse so that she wasn't a target for any more criminals tonight.

Sophie was too tired to jog, but nonetheless she tried to go as fast as she could, speeding by her favorite coffee shop, past closed restaurants and shops to her apartment building. Much nicer than the one she had lived in during college,Sophie punched in her code at the front door and a buzzer sounded as the door unlocked and she let herself in, fleeing to the elevators. Once safely inside her apartment, after fumbling for her keys and then locking the door behind her, she raced to the shower.

Scrubbing herself raw, she then jumped into bed and threw the covers over her head. Her stomach was sour and clenched in fear, and she willed the night away and sleep to come.

The next day was a day off, thank God, and after a restless sleep, Sophie woke up and moved to the couch where she had thrown her purse coming in the night before.

Sophie sunk to the floor next to the couch and counted out the bills. The paper nearly slid through her numb fingers….this was rent….for the month. She gaped at the cash in her hands and inwardly debated, take the money, which was surely covered in blood and gotten from the fruits of crime, or….do what with it exactly? Donate it to charity? Somehow that felt dirty and no answer seemed right….so instead she placed it in a ziploc bag and put it in her freezer. Sophie wondered if the bald man was worried if she would call the police, but then she thought of his shiny shoes, his suit that probably cost as much as her rent, the hardness in his eyes, and the bruising force of his grip. No, he probably wasn't afraid of anything, and he was probably waiting on the other side of a phone for a tip from some dirty mob cop about her call. Sophie knew she tended to be a pessimist, but she also considered herself a realist. Since the Wayne murder a few months ago, crime seemed to have doubled in Gotham, which was a scary thought. Sophie would probably be found dead in her apartment, robbed blind, and there would be no suspicion, just another unfortunate accident in crime-ridden Gotham. So instead, she put all of her focus into putting a wide radius between her and her phone and cleaning the hell out of her apartment. By the time night fell, she still hadn't found it in her to leave the apartment just yet, and do the grocery shopping she had planned on, so instead she ordered out. Thirty minutes later she had her music on low enough to hear the front door buzzer, and a good book just waiting to be read with some orange chicken. The buzzer sounded and Sophie moved to the panel by her door and pressed the button, allowing the take out person into the building, and waited. Moments later there was a knock on her door and peeking through the peep hole, Sophie opened the door for the delivery boy, and exchanged the money and tip for her food, and then closed the door. Locking the door behind her, she moved to the couch and fished her food out of the bag.

"No chopsticks or soy sauce!" she lamented as a knock sounded at her door again.

"My lucky day!" she sang as she unlocked the door and opened it, hand out for the forgotten goods. There stood the bald man.

Sophie retracted her hand as if bit, and stumbled over her feet to try and back up, smile falling off of her face with all of her color.

"Nurse Sophie Summers," the bald man greeted, leaning against the door jam, and effectively removing anyway she could close the door on his face.

"How did you…?" she asked, voice hoarse.

"Connections," he supplied, and then after a moment of silence, he slipped into her apartment, brushing by her side with his nice dark gray suit.

"Get out of my apartment," she begged, turning to follow him.

"You better close your door, anybody could just walk in," he said instead, and circled through her apartment like a dog investigating a new abode.

She stumbled to the door and closed it, then followed him as he made his circuit.

"What are you doing? You need to leave...before...before I call the police!"

"Your cell phone is on the couch, and the phone is in the kitchen," he stated as they circled back to the living room, "You'd never reach either before I would reach you."

The tone in his voice made her stop because it sounded like that is just what he wanted her to do, so instead she just looked at him, waiting. What was she waiting for, Sophie wondered. Death? Rape? Well she wasn't just gonna stand there and take it, she finally decided, and stomped her bare foot onto the wood floor that came with the nice 'safe' apartment building. "Get out of my apartment!"

"Sophie Summers…" he said, like he was feeling the words in his mouth, rolling them around, tasting them, and then he was in front of her. He stared at her in silence, his eyes rolling over her, and she felt his gaze like hands and it made her shiver. His hand reached out and she flinched away, but his fingers simply took a lock of hair and let it slide over the digits, examining its texture and color. Then his eyes were boring into hers again. She took a step back and he took a step forward. She realized belatedly in the silence that she liked the smell of his cologne, and that his eyes were a hard brown, like a Hershey's bar, and that they could darken...almost to black.

"Sophie Summers, from 3rd and Turner?" His breath was odorless as it blew over her face, and she stared confusedly at his hairless brow that was furrowed as he attempted to peer inside her through her eyeballs.

She wracked her brain with no idea of what he was talking about, until it came to her suddenly. "How do you know where I grew up?" she demanded, angry. "How much do you know about me? Why do you need to know that?"

He stepped back, and looked as stunned as she felt before they both heard a phone vibrate. The bald man reached into the chest of his suite and pulled out a slim phone, peered at the screen and then slipped it back into his pocket, a look of hardness and disdain on his face once again.

His dark brown eyes turned to her again and she opened her mouth to demand answers when he stepped forward so quickly it took her breath away. He had a long fingered hand on the left side of her face, fingers in her hair as he bent his head to her right ear.

"I will be back, Sophie Summers," he promised with a hushed whisper, and goosebumps rushed down the length of her body as her pulse raced. She heard him inhale deeply, his nose just above the pulse of her throat before he pulled away and moved towards the door.

"The hell….what's going on? I don't want you to come back! I want you to forget you ever snatched me off the street!" she demanded, following him to the door.

She grabbed his hand on the doorknob as he opened it to left himself out. He paused, eyes on their hands as her grip tightened.

"What's going on? I don't understand. I don't want-" she began, feeling hysterical, feeling confused at the way she reacted to him, had it been that damn long that she acted this pathetically?

He bent and whispered in her ear, his lips ghosting over her cheek before he slipped out the door and down the hall, and she was left staring at the wall in the hallway.

Victor Zsasz, he'd said.

The boy who used to walk her to school, the boy who used to crawl through her window.

I am Victor Zsasz.