Am, who's Spike talking to? I'm thinking Andrew or Xander.

In my head? Xander. In that lovely slashable space where they were living together, round about "Sleeper".

However, if you choose to put Andrew in, that would also work.

It has suddenly just reoccured to me their names were David Starsky and Kenneth Hutchinson. Kenny and Dave.

Odd, what surfaces.

Okay, disclaimer city: this is just a first scene, and I normally hate to post incomplete things in case I never finish them. Also? Never written Batman before. But I'm feeling a little stalled and hoping that if I release it into the wild, I might pick up the momentum I've lost.

****

It's a long time after midnight when he hops an empty train through downtown Gotham and beyond, taking the yellow line through the gentrifying neighborhoods where the young techies go to raise their charmingly multilingual children; then, as the train comes back above ground, past miles of working-class row houses, each looking like the next as the small hard-fought differences between them disappear into the dark. The train rattles and lurches, its brakes squealing at every curve and every stop, but nobody gets on or off, so it just moves on.

Finally, at 37th avenue, a drunk stumbles from the security of a pillar on the platform to the security of a bench inside the train. From the roof, the bat watches him, and the train keeps going.

Twombley Avenue is the end of the line. The drunk from 37th is fast asleep by now; he'll head back into town with the returning train, but the bat alights almost silently and heads down the rusted iron staircase to the street. Tucked under the elevated platform, a row of dark windows displays cheap Asian souvenirs behind their metal security grilles. Across the avenue, the fairgrounds are closed for the night.

He climbs the iron gate. His instinct after all these years is to scan for those intermediate places that will allow him to go over in a couple of quick leaps, almost like flying, or failing that to use one of his toys, but tonight he wants to do it the way he used to when he was just a pissed-off kid climbing into or out of trouble. He wants to feel his shoulder muscles strain and then catch as he pulls him up the vertical bars, feel the press of iron through the thin soles of his boots as he walks his feet up them. It would be even better if he could feel the rust and old lead paint and raw metal digging into his bare hands, but he's already halfway up when he thinks of it, and it's too late to stop to take the gauntlets off. And it works. He has to stop to rest at the top, and he looks out over the darkened lights and the roller coaster on the near horizon before he drops down into the darkened fairgrounds.

After hours, when the crowds have gone, only the freaks are left.

A twisted little carnie is hosing the cigarette butts and empty cotton candy cones out of the middle of the walkway next to a trailer painted with the legends TWO HEAD BABY -- WORLDS SMALLEST PIG -- GAINT RAT. The water leaves the sidewalks shining in the reflected light of the streetlights, the moon, and the bat signal.

BATMAN SMASH HEAD!

AMYCH DA BOMB.

Umm, more please?

Thank you, my dear! you shall have more as soon as I've got more to post. Off again to play in the dark, deserted places....

Amych, that's damned fun.

But GAINT rat? Is that deliberate?

Gaint or giant, it's very in-pulling. More, please, amy.

Definitely more. But I was genuinely curious - was that deliberate, that spelling? Park of the stage-setting, I mean? Because it would be a very cool touch....

But GAINT rat? Is that deliberate?

Very deliberate. It was spelled that way on a freakshow-in-formaldehyde exhibit at the NC State Fair for many years, and it always struck me -- this is the first time I've had a chance to use it.