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Interconnectedness is not a damnation.
It does not sully the soul, though the mind is gone. Though, perhaps, Parasite finds this untrue. Gotham’s thoughts are not the Parasite’s own, though perhaps they are. Gotham’s heart is not Parasite’s, though perhaps it is.
Gotham and the Parasite step to the same beat and have the same thoughts and—
They do not.
There is data upon data upon data hidden within the depths of Gotham, but Gotham will not let it see. Parasite can only act. There is a vague recollection of something, there, in the depths of its mind.
Interconnectedness is not a damnation.
It does not sully the soul.
The mind is not intact, but it is.
Bruce Wayne is a man gone long before the Parasite takes form. He is dead weeks before the Parasite comes to be.
The Parasite knows him. It knows the lines of his face the way that it knows the planes of its body. The lines where the man perpetually frowns in every late photo of himself. Parasite knows him, beyond the physical. Intrinsically, the Parasite knows his anger and his bitterness and his kindness and he—it knows him.
The mind is not intact, but, but, but.
The man previously known as Nightwing pins the Parasite against a wall, snarling.
He, Richard Grayson, demands of it many things, but first he demands the location of Batman.
The Parasite does not know. It knows Batman, yes. Is familiar with him, in the dark depths of its mind. But Parasite does not know what has become of the man known as Batman. Bruce Wayne is dead. His successor—a man who Parasite cannot name—is a blank space in the partition of Parasite’s memory.
It has been wiped clean, a blank slate. It is like trying to remember a program after Gotham has data dumped the Parasite. After Gotham has taken and taken and taken and nothing remains, not even the memory of the girl with gentle hands, not even the boy who had loved—
“Where is he?” the man known as Nightwing asks, slamming the Parasite against the wall again.
Parasite does not speak, but it is the only way out of this. “I don’t know,” it gasps. “I don’t know. The Batman is—missing. Gone. Like a ghost.”
The Nightwing’s eyes widen. An emotion that the Parasite cannot name flitters across his face before he lands on sorrow and anger. The Parasite is intimately familiar with anger, though it has no idea the reason for it.
Nonetheless, it and Gotham are separate, for now. Gotham cannot save it without time on her side. And it is not. The Parasite has no doubt that the Nightwing will be able to brutalize it in his anger before Gotham’s Sword arrives.
“Terry,” the Nightwing breathes brokenly. “Terry.”
“Terry?” the Parasite echoes, reaching its hands up to circle around the man’s wrist.
The man slowly releases the Parasite’s shoulder. Parasite releases his wrist.
“What happened to you?” the Nightwing asks.
The Parasite does not know what he’s referring to. Perhaps it is the anger that bubbles under its skin. Perhaps the Nightwing can see it. Maybe that is the Parasite’s flaw. Gotham named it so for a reason, it would not surprise it if that were why.
But the Nightwing proves him wrong. His old and worn hands gently touch the cold, hard metal embedded into the organic flesh that Gotham has allowed it to keep.
“Oh, Terry,” the Nightwing says.
The Parasite does not understand, but something harsh and broken stabs its heart.
“I’m sorry.”
Somehow, Parasite does not think apologies will fix anything.