Chapter Text
Meticulous analysis of her own motivations had driven Y/N to come to the conclusion that her hatred was justified. Nothing was done without something profoundly belonging to one's own unresolved conflicts being involved in the decisions and paths of choice. Such was the case of the Batman, she'd concluded. Whoever he was behind that mask, he was not pursuing his role as a masked 'protector of Gotham' without a great degree of personal motive beyond selfless devotion to the wellbeing of the city. Long had she studied this concept meticulously, as to do introspection on her own reasons behind her new objectives. The Batman and herself found congruence in the belief that violence was an indispensable tool to maintain order, humanity after all was nothing but an attempt to break a deeply embedded bond with primitive, animal instincts, such as sin. However it was this particular ethic that took from Y/N the only person who stood by her side since the day she was born.
Her brother, like a forbidden fenix, had found in the drug business what was ethically questionable, but an opportunity to a new life at last. Poverty had reigned in as many generations as their family registered for, which were not many, but enough to bring a loss of hope at ever escaping the circumstances. The drug business was dangerous, but her brother was sly and grown to be a street-smart individual, he knew where he could mess and where he couldn't. Finding also a strike of luck in the fact that where they lived -a little apartment above a Chinese-owned laundry shop, was a precarious condominium where a low-ranked pawn from Carmine Falcone also had his home. This kid had befriended Y/N's brother and recommended him with Falcone, being the crucial connection to begin working for the druglord.
While unable to approve of his line of work, Y/N couldn't find it in her morality to refuse his dirty money. Like Tony Montana he'd return home with the fruit of his criminality and she'd accept it like a gift, one with a catch, but her brother always managed to sound reassuring enough to make the odds of something happening to him seem lower than they were. Oh, was it such a crime to be gullible and young, and believe your older brother? Y/N had once tried to believe that she simply didn't have what it took to stop him, or that it wasn't her place in his story, fate had planted it's seed on him and his demise was only meant to happen the second he agreed to dance with the Devil.
Despite her brother's rapidly increasing earnings, she felt it a moral obligation to maintain her job as a janitor in Gotham University. She was no Will Hunting, but she did find a particular itch of interest in the fields of sociology and psychology; studies of human condition. The job allowed her to ocasionally lean besides the auditoriums to listen to the lectures of intellectual professors. Her mind was like a sponge, and her curiosity drove her to absorve every drop of information she'd hear, and study it later in her free time.
It was one of those days where she spent some hours off the clock on campus, long done with her cleaning duties yet attentively listening to the lesson behind the door. Had she left on time maybe the butterfly effect that spiraled into the end of her brother's life could have somehow been different. Had she left later, perhaps, something in the trail of events could have flipped a switch to prevent what happened to him. But she didn't, she stayed and listened to a seminar on social conducts and masses, while somewhere in Gotham her brother received punch after punch from the Batman as God's punishment for his temptation and greed.
If the Bat had intended to kill him or not was not of her concern, as intentions didn't free the vigilante from having her brother's blood on his hands. It was while checking the stock of a recently dropped off container in the portion of the port Falcone had used his filthy money to buy that Batman had striked. Her brother tried -in a naive act of loyalty, to defend the property of his employer. Poor boy, forgotten as another dog of the drug world, but to Y/N a victim of his circumstances trying to make the best out of the little life had to offer for them. Died in the hospital as he awaited for interrogation, his insides mashed into a gorey pureé of organs that spat their own blood and failed to survive the brutality of their wounds.
Sure, the Batman may have saved damsels in distress from having their purses snatched by low life thieves, or prevented a hypothetical drug addict from getting another taste of their self-indulgence, but was he really saving people? Doing something worthwhile? For all she knew, all his masked activism was of no use if they had no effect in the long-term and the masses, and in the process took the lives and resources of hard-working low income people. She was no fool, Y/N had obviously assessed the possibility that maybe what happened to her brother was, again, a matter of fate, a divine punishment for succumbing to the desire for easy money. But then again, his motivations were only honest, and he was looking out for his and his family's best interest. What more does a man have to do to be noble and worth of living without being punished for collateral misdoings that are only human?
Falcone had presented his distant condolences in the shape of a young man knocking at her door, offering the drug lord's words of comfort and a pitiful offer for a job in his headquarters at The Penguin's Iceberg Lounge. "A pretty face like yours could be pretty popular." spoke the raspy voice of The Penguin as his grotesquely large fingers held her chin. The Iceberg Lounge didn't belong to Falcone, but his connections allowed him to offer Y/N a job as a waitress in the place. Had she any choice? Not really, with her brother now dead, the income as a janitor was not nearly as much as the inviting sum of tips that sweetened her ear with the same voice of temptation that once spoke to her brother. Besides, she did need the money, and building links -even if they were mostly symbolic, with the Bat's enemies could grant her a closer look to the new channel of all her hatred.
It was once that Y/N begun to work for The Penguin that she fully committed in the sinful night-life. Her entire scheme and survival now relied on crime, sin and immorality. She had now signed her own contract, and indulged fully into the world of darkness and depravity, one that was once unknown to her and was now tied to her identity. She fed off of other's lust and crime, making her a criminal herself. But she no longer felt the fear or rejection for the underworld her brother's job had once made her feel, she now embraced it as her own for the sake of greater motivations. Like a legacy she had chosen to carry on, taking the job got her to quickly see first-hand the very embodiment of hedonism and sheer self-indulgence. The energy in the club was heavy, dark and evil, but Y/N resisted her days through it and engaged in her friendlies as a standard procedure for the night, meeting interesting people in the process.