ɪɴ ɢʟᴏʀʏ, ɪɴ ʀᴜɪɴ || ʙʀᴜᴄᴇ ᴡᴀʏɴᴇ + ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

1. ᴛʜᴇ ʙʀᴇᴀᴋ ɪɴ

It was raining again in Gotham City.

This was hardly a surprise, it was as if a constant sea of clouds hovered over the skyscrapers, barely pausing for a break between their downpours. Your boots were perpetually wet, your umbrella always in your bag. You were used to that.

You could hear the rain thrumming on the windowpane of your bedroom, and you shifted, tugging the duvet up to your chin. The clock on your bedside table told you it was half past three in the morning, meaning you'd have to go extra heavy on the under eye concealer the next morning. Just like the rain, insomnia was also common. You were used to that, too. Some nights you didn't sleep at all, and when that happened, you poured over whatever story you were currently chasing, eyes heavy, but when you closed them, sleep never came. It was clockwork.

It seemed like tonight was another one of those nights. You rubbed your eyes with the heels of your hands, rolling onto your side. Maybe you needed to get a sleep aid. Lucy at the office was always recommending different supplements, and you really promised you'd try them. You even did, a few times. But nothing seemed to work.

That, too, was something you were used to.

You sat up in bed, carding a hand through your mussed hair, sighing heavily. You were dreadfully wide awake. This would mark two sleepless nights now, and you didn't know how long you could keep functioning on just caffeine. With a soft breath, you rose from your bed, pulling on your housecoat and tying it at the waist. You considered working on a story, but this one was mind numbingly boring. Just another drug bust with over-embellished achievements that made the GCPD look good. You were tired of making them look good, especially after what happened with The Riddler.

But the story was due tomorrow morning, and if you didn't get it done, your editor would tear you to shreds. You tied your hair back into a ponytail as you left the bedroom to go into your office. Your laptop sat closed on the desk, and you pulled back the chair to take a seat.

The article was half finished, and you tried your hardest not to let your disinterest bleed into your writing, but as you read it over, what you'd written was the droll, monotonous garbage you hated seeing in papers. You groaned inwardly as you shifted into edit mode, eyes scanning the screen.

You had no idea how much time had passed, but when you looked at the clock at the bottom of your computer screen, it told you it was almost four in the morning. You gave up on getting any sleep that night. Maybe you'd try for a quick nap at your desk when you got to work when you took your break. Or maybe you'd just ask Lucy for horse tranquilizer. If that didn't put you to sleep, nothing would.

As you leaned back in your chair to rub your eyes, you heard something from behind you.

The rational part of you brushed it off. You lived in an old building, and it could be just something settling. You heard sounds like that all the time. The irrational part of you had your hackles up. The sounds you usually heard were random rushes of water in the pipes, creaks as the building settled, and the odd thud or shudder of the old wood swelling in the humidity the rain brought. What you heard, though, sounded like a footstep. You were used to hearing those, too, from above you, since you lived in a ground floor apartment. But this one seemed to come from closer.

You decided it was just the lack of sleep and the old building, chalking it up to nothing, and you turned back to your work, until about fifteen minutes later when you heard the sound again. You froze.

It sounded like someone shifting their weight. The floorboards in your apartment were old, and if someone was walking, you'd hear it all throughout the unit. You wanted to say it was a coincidence, but then you heard it a third time, and you went into fight or flight mode. If someone was in your house, you had no idea how they'd gotten in. You locked the windows always, unless you had one open, and even then you had screens in each window. You slowly rose from your chair, grabbing a letter opener from your desk before slowly walking from the office.