I remember one night early in my career, Gordon looked at me quizzically and asked a question I keep hearing, often from myself.

I was in the pouring rain, a would-be rapist in one hand while my other was knotted into a fist dripping with his blood. Gordon surprised me from behind, something I didn’t let happen ever again. He stumbled upon me caught in a rage as I pummeled the man’s face in. We weren’t yet friends, but we’d worked together before, so he didn’t even pull his gun. He only reached for it.

“You’re one of the good guys, right?” He asked.

I responded by dropping the wretch into a puddle of rain and rat feces, then taking out my grappling hook and lifting myself away from the scene. It was one of the few times Gordon ever watched me exit anywhere

A year or two later, I had a similar interaction with Clark. I’d worked with him before, but it was still early in our relationship. We didn’t really know each other, and he still thought I didn’t know he was Superman. We weren’t friends back then.

I was staking out a Gotham drug king-pin that was carrying out a deal in Metropolis when the red and blue boy-scout appeared. He flew up to the rooftop I was stationed at, holding a quizzical look on his face. The narrowed eyes and curiously pursed lips also carried a slight sign of what was either annoyance or anger. I couldn’t blame him for anything he was feeling. If I’d caught him surveilling a building in Gotham back in those days, I’d be curious, and maybe more than a little territorial as well. That said, full of my own ego, I didn’t feel like walking him through my entire investigation, so I pretended to ignore him. But he’s Superman.

“You’re one of the good guys, right?” He asked.

I replied by shooting a canister of tear gas into the building across the street, then grappling over and slamming my body through the window. Metro PD got fifteen collars that night.

It’s become a routine whenever people ask that question: I stay silent and I act on it. People need to realize that good isn’t just a category we can box people into, it’s about action. My Catholic father would have some qualms with that but ultimately agree, and the same goes for my Jewish mother. They both instilled in me an inherent desire to be thought of as good while also teaching me that the best way towards that was to actually do good things for good reasons. For the right reasons. Heaven and Hell were far off and probably not real, what mattered was doing the right thing every time I had the chance. I respond to those questions with action because that is the only appropriate response.

That’s what I tell myself at least.

The truth is, I don’t know if my actions are good. If anyone knew how much second-guessing I do, or how much self-doubt I carry, they wouldn’t believe it. Selina knows, but every time I bring up the question of whether or not my good deeds really count, she quotes Bojack Horseman and tells me that I’m fetishizing my own sadness. Maybe she’s right. I know for a fact that Clark and Diana question their actions as well, but I also know that it’s different for them. Neither of them are Batman. Batman is not a symbol of hope and all things good in the world.

Take an ornate Catholic Church interior: Diana is the angel, the kind messenger sent here to guide and protect. Clark, no matter how much he wishes he weren’t, is Jesus as of late. The savior of humanity that can do no wrong. But I’m not inside the church, nor can I ever be. I’m the gargoyle on the outside. I am ugly and cruel and scary in order to protect the worshipers inside from everything uglier and crueler and scarier on the outside. I like being the gargoyle because someone has to be. But just because I’m not a symbol of hope does not mean that I don’t have a role to play in inspiring it.

I’m Batman. I’m supposed to keep people safe from the monsters that would prey on them by taking on the qualities of those monsters. But I can never—must never become the monster itself. It’s hard to tell when I’m edging too close to that monstrosity. I make mistakes and toe the line between gargoyle and demon. It could be something relatively small, like being too brutal with a criminal, or it could be something that spells doom for millions, like my involvement with Brother Eye. Every time I try to do something so good that I might shake these wings and scales off my back for a second, something brings me back. Maybe it’s a mistake I make because of my hubris or paranoia, maybe it’s not a mistake but a necessary evil I must perform to keep other safe--there’s always something else that brings Batman out of the blue cowl and back to the black one. So I try and save my good deeds for when I become Bruce Wayne again, because Bruce Wayne isn’t as encumbered by the same burdens as Batman. The same problems persist nevertheless. 

Barry once asked me how I managed to build the Batcave without anyone noticing. I told him I used undocumented migrant laborers who were paid handsomely and given papers. He laughed, because there was no way that I’d do that. Diana once remarked that bankrolling the Justice League had to have made my investors suspicious. I told her that I cook my books and she rolled her eyes like she didn’t believe it. And of course, she didn’t believe it, or at least she didn’t want to. But the simple fact is that on paper, Bruce Wayne is a corrupt capitalist. I’ve hacked my own FBI file before, there are theories that I’m connected to everyone from El Chapo to Lex Luthor. These sins I carry even affect my private and family lives. Clark asked how I managed to hide the boys’ bruises and cuts from Gotham Academy’s school officials, and I told him that whenever a school counsellor comes knocking, I build another dormitory or create another scholarship. He thought about it for a moment, and then told me that would never work even if it were true. Oliver Queen and Vic Sage are perhaps the only Leaguers fully aware of how dirty Bruce Wayne’s hands have become by maintaining Batman, and I think a part of them still hates me for it.

It bothers me to know that to maintain this lie, I’ve had to paint myself as the very thing my parents always told me to never become. Yet I keep doing it. I funnel money into off-shore accounts. I find families on the border abandoned by coyotes and promise them a house in a suburb in Michigan if they build yet another safe-house for me. I’ve paid bribes more bribes than I can keep track of. To save a boat of sex slaves, I had to implicate myself in their capture and transport. Bruce Wayne has to get his hands dirty just as much as Batman, and that’s what the others don’t realize. In order for both Bruce Wayne, the hope of Gotham, and Batman, it’s ever-present gargoyle to coexist, we have to do things that neither of us want to do.

The night of February First, I did one of those things.

Continued in CH 2.2