Hajime Kinoko  /  Ethel Cain,
UNPUNISHABLE

TW: sex, graphic violence,
implication of SA

𝖎.
SHIBARI

RESENTMENT SITS BETWEEN HER TEETH in the form of a lit cigarette: she can't decide whether it's herself as a whole she's so uncomfortable with, or the parts she's leeched from others that she can separate with the sharpened point of a knife. Nonplussed, she takes another drag in a half-assed attempt to destroy both and looks through the prison-bar railing of her fire escape, her brown eyes black in the night.

For the briefest moment, the young woman feels sick—a promise had been made, once upon a time, to stop. To be better. She had meant it, too, earnestly and with good intention, genuine intention even, if you wanted to stretch it that far.

But that was what the truth was with Sierra Reva: something to be stretched, to be tied and untied like a rope, to be a noose placed around her neck, or yours. The last few years had presented a very open-and-shut case as to why Sierra, and her word, could not be trusted. What were the reasons, again? Her numerous breakdowns, volcanic in nature, and periods of relentless self-destruction? Or the empty promises that punctuated the spaces between her excuses, her I'll get betters and this won't happen agains and—don't forget—the classic you can trust me this time.

None of them worked. None of them stuck.

At this point, asking Sierra Reva to change was synonymous with asking to be let down: you were setting yourself up for disappointment. With a track record like hers, you—just like Sierra—had no-one to blame but yourself.

Her gaze lingers on the cherry, a beady, bloodshot eye in the dark. Guilt slices at her chest, cutting through flesh, muscle, bone. She imagines herself an abattoir; unsatisfied with the cut of meat she's just pulled from the bone, she pushes it aside and cleaves another. She pushes it down, and lets her eyes fall upon the city.

Gotham after dark is like another plane of reality, and in it, she's barely corporeal. All she can do is observe and so, that is what Sierra does, her insatiable gaze eating up every inch of the neighbourhood. East End—like most of Gotham, thanks to its dependably-miserable weather—is perpetually damp, and the wet concrete reflects every inch of light that touches it. Every neon sign, every moonbeam, every bruising siren. The result, in this instance, is a street that is always lit, a fluorescent postcard of unpaid rent and negligent civic service in the lower east side of a city that can never be calm.

Restless or otherwise, it bares itself to Sierra, providing a crisp, if not flickering, light for her to dissect by. It etherises itself, hands her the scalpel, lays down on the operating table, and waits for the cut.

This is the natural order of things: Sierra, and Gotham. Sierra holding a knife, her city holding its breath, and the waiting game between them, as familiar as a lover and as predictable and mortal.

Sierra, and Gotham. Sierra, and the knife.

Who will bleed first?

From here, Sierra can see the stray cats that frequent the left side of her street, see them as they pad delicately over the roof-tiles of the building opposite. She recognises them by the name the neighbourhood kids have so cleverly given them: the inseparable Salt and Pepper. Sierra feeds the renegade felines on the occasions they wander up her fire escape. They are not special: Sierra always has food, Sierra always feeds the cats, and Sierra has always had a thing for strays.

She can also see, from her roost, the outline of Wayne Tower. Built as per Cyrus Pinkney's Gothic-esque design, it's a dark and foreboding structure, a bad omen of glass and concrete and steel. If Sierra hadn't seen and lived within the confines of Bruce Wayne's mansion, she would say that the tower was the most obvious monument to his family's success, to his parents' legacy. But knowing what lurked beneath the surface (both metaphorically and architecturally) she could not say this in good faith, in any faith. And even though her life as it were in the present was only what it was because of what Wayne Tower stood for—or rather, whom it stood for—the very sight of it, the very reminder, hollowed out Sierra's insides.

It's a familiar feeling.

She finishes her cigarette and turns away from East End, moving to re-enter her apartment, climbing back through the fire-escape window with ease. The nicotine settles on her lips as she slides the window shut and heads back to her bedroom.

She can still hear the shower going. Flicking on the big light, she eyes her bathroom door—shut tight, even though the man inside, who must be using all her hot water at this point, is one she has seen laid bare more times than either of them would like to count. Sierra tries to think nothing of it, or him, and chooses to be grateful for the walls, doors and other unspoken architecture between them; adjusting her silk robe, she moves soundlessly over her hardwood floors to reach her guest's messenger bag where it sits on the floor resting against the legs of her vanity.

Sierra takes a second to make sure Danny is still preoccupied in the shower. When the water doesn't shut off and the door doesn't open, she sits at her vanity and reaches for the bag with a perfectly-manicured hand. Her nails dig into the fabric of the bag, cautiously first and then with the conviction of a thief. Another moment passes—then, she takes out the GCPD-branded manilla folder she knew she would find inside.

The documents within the folder detail things Sierra already knows. Bad things, cruel things, that have been done to a girl who used to live in East End but now did not live anywhere, anywhere at all. Grace was her name, and she had worked with Sierra at one of Roman Sionis' clubs over in the bowery. Two weeks ago, Grace went home with one of Sionis' men. He paid Grace for one night, kept her for six, and left her in the gutter for the rest.

Sierra knows who did it—she's been on the receiving end of his abysmal tips, and fielded his fumbling attempts at flirting a dozen times before. The GCPD also know who did it, according to this file. But from what Sierra could gather from Danny's notes, written neatly on pastel green Post-Its, they had no intention of doing anything about it. In fact, Danny's precinct had held him for a few hours, then, after a direct order from the Captain, had let him walk free.

On the back of one of Danny's notes: Bribes?

Very helpful, Danny. Thank you. Sierra thumbed through the file, her face blank and expressionless. Emotionless, until she reached the photos of Grace's body as the forensics team had found it—shit, her.

Beaten, bruised, bloated and bound.

Things got kinky, John Tyler had said during his interrogation, maybe a little rough. But I paid what I owed and then I sent her on her way.

All Sierra needed was confirmation of something. She finds it, on the last page, then puts everything back in its place. Then, she sits straight at her vanity and touches up her makeup, the smudged spider legs of her mascara, the blackcurrant, just-bitten red of her lips. The shade she had used tonight was not as transfer-proof as its reviews had led her to believe; still, she reapplies it, smacking her lips just as the bathroom door swings open and Danny steps out. She doesn't acknowledge him for a few moments, her eyes fixed decidedly on her own reflection. But then, he comes up behind her, six feet and two inches of warm, brown skin and hard muscle wrapped in a towel cinched at the taper of his waist, and she is compelled to give him the attention they both know he craves.

When he isn't her Danny, which is most of the time, he is Detective Daniel Rosas of the GCPD, East End precinct. Though they're past the point in their relationship where they have to pretend they care about what each other has to say, Sierra knows everything about him, the bullet-points of his personal history that they will put on the PowerPoint presentation at his memorial when he is inevitably blown up by some psychotic Gotham supervillain, and everything in between. He was born and raised in Gotham by a white father and Mexican mother, along with two sisters and a brother. He went to Gotham-U on a football scholarship, but he's always been smart. He graduated the top of his class in Criminal Justice and instead of making a good life for himself by getting out of here, he decided to stay in Gotham and try to make life good for others.

He likes cappuccinos with extra chocolate powder, even though Sierra has told him the chocolate does little to sweeten the coffee itself. His favourite place in Gotham is a park near the precinct. He likes green, which Sierra also likes, but he doesn't know that. He is gorgeous, and mostly well-intentioned. He is one of the good ones. He has been engaged for twelve months, and he has been seeing Sierra for eighteen.

He can be hypocritical sometimes, paradoxical. He would make a good husband to his fiancée, if he wasn't such a good boyfriend to Sierra. He is not hers.

This is something Sierra has made peace with, and she's not just saying that. Frankly, she disliked the badge he wore more than the ring he'd given his then-girlfriend-now-fiancée; she avoided the GCPD almost as intently as the GCPD sought people like her out. Besides, as she liked to tell herself—Danny, Daniel, whatever, was one of many, and there were many who would gladly take his place.

Still, when he reaches to run his hand through her dark, curly hair, she smiles at him with a tenderness that is painfully genuine. "Did you enjoy your shower?"

"Mostly." Danny seems content to play with her hair a little longer, then changes his mind and turns, revealing to Sierra his back—and the bright red scratch marks dug deep into his flesh. "These kind of held me up, though. I didn't even think about how much they'd hurt in the hot water."

Reflexively, Sierra laughs. She likes pain like that, pain that makes things real and gives her something real, something wounding, to recover from. But when Danny makes a face, she bites it all back, rising from her seat and taking him in her arms. Never mind that her nails—long, almond-shaped, red as blood and clearly, sharp as knives—are the culprit, she traces the marks gently with the pad of her thumb. "I'm sorry." She doesn't sound very sorry, and Danny knows she isn't.

"I don't know how I'm going to hide these from her."

Sierra twists around him, so that she faces the cuts—so that the cuts face her. Leaning her head upon the back of his shoulder, she presses her lips to his spine. "Mm... you could pretend a criminal got you."

"Who? Catwoman?"

Now, that really was funny. Sierra kissed his back again. "Maybe."

"What would Catwoman want from me? What would any criminal want from me? I don't think she's going to believe I got clawed by some lowlife with inch-long nails."

That was Sierra. Some lowlife with inch-long nails. "You're good-looking enough that I'd believe it."

Danny half-snorts, half-scoffs, turning so that he and Sierra were facing each other once more. "Oh?"

Her voice low and sweet, Sierra runs her hands up the plane of his chest. She can imagine the heart it protects, heavy and human and not hers, not even a little. "Mm, the hottest police officer in all of Gotham."

"I am technically a detective now."

"Oh, right, of course. My apologies." Sierra looked up at him innocently. "Do you still have to carry handcuffs with you?"

"Si—"

Sierra laughs again, leaning up to kiss him on the lips. "I'm kidding. Let me at least clean up your back before you go."

She sat him on the edge of her bed, his back turned to her, then stepped into the bathroom to grab her first aid kit. Upon her return, she kissed the back of his neck, then began to treat the wounds, cleaning them first before dressing them with light gauze. At every turn she was careful, gentle, even when he was murmuring under his breath, even when the cuts started to sing.

"You can't mark me like that again, Si." Danny said suddenly.

"I know. I'm sorry, baby, I was just enjoying myself." A pause, then: "I didn't mean to hurt you."

This seemed to satisfy him. "It's fine."

"Is it?" The scratches were not the only marks she had left. Hickeys on his neck, thighs, hips—bruises. She never knew when to stop. "I can be... less, next time. If you want."

"No, no." He knew that tone of voice, even if he did not know her (at least, as summarily as she knew him.) "I just don't want her to find out. This, and work, it's a lot."

Danny only saw her when he was stressed: she was an outlet in a silk robe and thigh highs. This role, although reductive, was useful on occasion; one would be surprised at how much you can learn over pillow talk. "Work?"

"Mhm."

"What's happening, baby?" Sierra stopped, dropping her head to kiss the nape of his neck. His hand came up and around the back of her head, holding her close, holding her like a comfort. "You can talk to me."

"You know about the Bowery girl, don't you?"

"Yeah. You told me about her the other night." Sierra angled her face, trailing her kisses up the side of his neck. She stopped at the soft spot behind his ear. "What about her? Did they find who did it?"

"Yes."

"Are they going to put him away?"

"No." Sierra felt him tense. "We held him for a few hours, but my captain made us let him go."

She did her best to keep her voice soft, measured. "Why?"

"I don't know."

You do know, Danny. Bribes, remember?

"Hey, Si?"

"Yes, baby?"

Danny let his hand fall from the back of her head to her cheek. With his thumb he blindly follows her cheekbones, his touch gentler than hers has ever been. "Did you know her? She worked at the Sionis club in Bowery—you were there for a bit, weren't you?"

Sierra kissed behind his ear again. "What was her name—remind me?"

"Grace White."

Sierra pulled away to continue dressing his back, letting his hand return to his lap. "No, I didn't know her," she said, perhaps a little too quickly. "I mean, maybe we talked once or twice? But a lot of girls work at those clubs, babe. They're in and out." In and out and there and then gone.

"Alright."

Sierra let a few minutes pass in silence. Then: "What did they do to her?"

"I don't think you really want to hear about that, Si."

"I do. And I can handle it. I'm a big girl."

Daniel mediated for a second, then cleared his throat. When he spoke, it was slow and careful, like he was scared he'd scar Sierra for life. "She was bound and gagged when we found her, and..."

"And what, baby?"

"He beat her to death. Left her for the rats."

In her apartment's spare room—a room Daniel had not seen and never would—is a wall, where all Sierra's knives are on display. She has quite the collection, spanning centuries, cultures, purpose and ceremony. It's so expansive it's almost concerning. And yet, Sierra knows every blade intimately, knows the grip, the weight, the damage.

Most importantly, she knows the cut. And she imagines it with every word Daniel speaks, visualises it upon skin, flesh, bone.

She was bound and gagged.

He beat her to death.

And left her for the rats.

Sierra fixed the final strip of gauze to Daniel's back. "So who did it?"

"This guy named John Tyler." A pause. "He works for Black Mask. That's why Phil let him go."

It comes out before Sierra can stop herself. "Tyler works for Black Mask? Or your captain does?"

Daniel falls silent.

"Sorry, that was a shitty question."

"It's fine. Honestly, Si, I just don't know how to answer it."

So a yes on both counts. Sierra forced a smile. Taking Daniel by the shoulders, she turned him around to face her, sliding her hips between his knees. Even as she stands by the bed, by him, he's still taller. "You'd tell me if you were on Black Mask's payroll, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, definitely." Daniel tipped his head up so he could watch her. "I would never work for him, though."

"Something every corrupt GCPD officer has said at some point or another, I imagine."

"Detective," Daniel corrects, then smiles. He doesn't smile often, but when he does it's a sight, addictive, arresting—no pun intended—and so bright it makes Sierra wish he was hers. His eyes, and the way they in tandem crease at the corners, do nothing to help with this hopelessness. It's hers, all hers. "I have standards. I could see myself working for Penguin, maybe."

Sierra laughed, "Penguin?"

"Yeah, Penguin. Or Two-Face—he's only half-bad, right? One part of him's still a lawyer."

"A prosecutor, specifically."

"A prosecutor? Perfect." Daniel's face lit up, and he laughed too, "Prosecutors are all about justice, and I too am all about justice."

Sierra rolled her eyes, barely suppressing her smile. "You're an idiot."

"Maybe." Daniel pulls her into his lap, his hands sliding underneath her robe and up the hardness of her thighs. "So, we got rid of the scratch marks."

"You're going with my 'a criminal got me' story?"

"It's the best I got," Daniel says solemnly. "But there's still the issue of the hickeys."

"I like them. I think they suit you."

"She's not going to believe I got those from some guy I put away."

"I mean, maybe he got you real good."

"Sierra."

"Yes?"

"I'm being serious."

"Sure you are." She slid a hand between them, hooking her fingers on the sash that kept her robe tied and closed. She loosened the knot a little. Then a lot. "I guess you just can't let her see you naked for a little bit. No showers, no sex... what a shame."

"Yeah," Daniel said absently. He was clearly preoccupied with something else, probably something in his eyeline.

"I wouldn't have a problem with hickeys or scratches if I was your fiancée," Sierra said, taking one of his hands from his thigh and guiding it up up up to her chest. "I mean, they'd have to be from me and me only—you'd have to drop the sidepieces when you propose—but, you know."

Daniel, ever pliant, let himself be positioned as necessary. He was even willing to take the initiative, his free hand stripping her robe from her entirely and discarding it on the floor. "You're too young to be married."

"Not too young to be engaged."

"Nineteen is definitely too young."

"And twenty-four is any better?" Sierra scoffed gently, moving his unoccupied hand somewhere more useful. "You make yourself sound so old."

"Because I am." A pause, as Daniel looked down to watch his hand, his fingers, how Sierra moved around them. "You deserve better."

"Not really."

"Really." He sighed. Unwilling to look her in the eye, he props his chin up on her shoulder instead, gaze shifting to watch her bare back in the reflection of her vanity mirror. Even though Sierra cannot see herself, and even though the big light above them is bright and unflattering, she knows she is stunning.

She always has been. Sierra is that beautiful stranger, all dark and brooding and perfect, equal parts sharp and soft but wholly symmetrical. At no angle is she unattractive; there is not one inch of her perfect, violent body that a man has not wanted to possess, not now or at any point in her personal history. When she was younger, it was just her facial features, the sharpness of her nose, cheekbones and jaw, the softness of her eyes and lips. Now it is her body, too, her thighs and tits and ass and all those other words boys and men and everyone in between like to reduce her to. Everything about her contributes to the appeal. The makeup, light but elevating. The piercings, gold in her eyebrow, nose, septum and earlobes. The hair, endless and dark like night. The body, flexible from years of training, years of practice.

This is fine. Sierra knows she is hot. She knows she is fuckable. This is a biological fact, she tells herself, and it is a good thing. Because if everyone pays attention to the soft parts of her, they miss the other parts, the hard parts, the monstrous parts, the ones that make her a killer.

Even now, as Daniel fucks her with his fingers, she is still in control. She could break every bone in his hand with one fluid motion of her own; hell, she could break every bone in his body. There are a million ways to die, and Sierra could catalyse at least a few. She could strangle him, she could snap his neck. She could slit his throat with the scissors in the first aid kit, or the scalpel. She could smother him with one of the pillows on her bed.

This is gruesome cinema. Sierra imagines, instead, a world where she is Daniel's fiancée—where she is the Mrs. Rosas-to-be, where she is not a secret or someone that Daniel only ever acknowledges after midnight. She imagines their wedding, which would be the only occasion Sierra would willingly wear white—otherwise, it's far too easy to stain. She imagines their house. She imagines what their children might look like, if they had them. Sierra and Daniel had two of the most beautiful faces ever seen in all of human history; what would their children look like? Gorgeous monstrosities, Sierra supposed, painfully, biologically perfect. They would be half-Daniel's inconsistent morality and half-Sierra's self-destructive tendencies, which was not promising. Perhaps they would be neither.

Sierra will never know. All of Daniel that belongs to her is the flesh under her fingernails.

She comes, and as she does, she closes her fingers around Daniel's wrists, digging her nails so hard into his arm she again draws blood. This time, he does not let her undo the damage. He doesn't even let her clean the wound. He kisses the side of her neck, shimmies out from underneath her, gets dressed, and goes. Disappointed, but not surprised.

She has never been good at letting things go.

Sierra waits for the sound of his footsteps to recede down the hall, then picks herself up and pieces herself back together. She finds her robe on the floor, but doesn't bother to put it back on, instead hanging it over the back of her vanity's coordinated chair and heading for the bathroom.

In the mirror above the sink, she is as beautiful as ever. But here, in focus, she can see the collateral damage of her beauty—her violence. Over the past six days, Sierra has managed to accumulate four bruised ribs, one bloody (but, thank God, not broken) nose, various scrapes and scuffs, and a black eye she could barely cover with concealer. Impermanent trophies awarded through her efforts on Gotham's behalf, Sierra was—is—proud of them.

Each and every one. A scar on her skin is a score to her tally. How many points she needed until she won, she doesn't know—she doesn't even know what prize she receives if and when she does win. But until she does, until she meets her angel, her prophet, the one who will tell her she's done enough and is enough, this is how it will be. Bones, and bruises, and blood.

Daniel noticed this earlier when he came in from the night. He used to ask about the injuries, perhaps out of concern that someone out there was hurting her and he, the only decent cop in all of Gotham, could save her. How could she tell him everything hurt her? How could she tell him she was the one doing the hurting? Besides, she was sure he was asking only to be a hero, and as far as she was concerned he could save her from herself about as much she could save him from his impending marriage.

These wounds were for her, and her only. She liked their decorum, but they did not serve her or her vanity. She still made the paradoxical effort to cover them up; Gotham was as judgemental as it was grimy, and although there was nothing Sierra would like to do more than simply die, she still had a life to live, still had to deal with the in-between, the normalcy, the empty void that was her civilian life. It was hard enough without looking like an over-tenderised piece of meat—if people thought she was beautiful, she wanted to at least reap the rewards of it.

Sierra blinks up at herself in the mirror as she reaches to touch a bruise hidden by her hairline, dark like rot against her skin. She meets her reflection's stare: satisfaction licks at her chest, a warm and welcome feeling, but disgust twists a knife in her stomach. She might be beautiful, yes, but right now, she looks exactly as she feels—half-dead.

Even with the makeup that smooths out the imperfections, softens the sharp edges so that she and no-one else might cut themselves upon them—even with the warmth in her cheeks brought forth by the rush of sex and thrill of infidelity—there is something in her face that is wrong. An implicit darkness, one that starts in her eyes and like some sick, deep decay, finds a way to corrupt the rest of her features. It's animalistic, feral, something that could be mistaken for interest in the right light. But Sierra knows what it is, at its core; it's the kind of interest a predator has in its prey.

But most will pretend they can't see it. Detective Daniel Rosas, case in point. Sierra is beautiful, what fantasies are made of, thighs and tits and ass, but she understands what it is to be ugly. She knows it.

Nemesis knows it better.

She put on the makeup for Daniel. But he's gone now, so there is no longer any need; turning on the faucet, she begins to clean it off. Her manufactured ectoplasm circles the drain—her trusty concoction of mascara, foundation, concealer and lipstick—and she bows her head in silent prayer to herself as it disappears. Sierra is nothing if not routine, and this is her recession: trading one mask for another, day in and day out, never letting herself breathe. Never letting herself exist.

Even in this apartment, in this new life she has made for herself, she has her guard up. Still, she asserts to herself, it's better than the manor. At this point, she would say anything is. Ideally, she would have left Gotham entirely. Entirely and with great haste. That had been the plan, at first: for the past five years she had tried to convince herself that Gotham—and those she cared for who called it home, living or dead—had never been anything more than a pitstop. She had tried to convince herself that, if she survived a little longer, pushed herself another proverbial mile, she would make it through the gauntlet, reach the light on the other side. She would escape. She would be fine.

Well. It's okay. You're allowed to laugh.

The other option had been to die, and from there the path became forked: what was she to do? Wait for death? Or cut to the chorus and do it herself?

Ever since Jason, Sierra has been more an animal than a teenage girl. Despite the near-two decades of training that had made every movement of hers deadly and exact, every mannerism, she was still little more than misguided anger bordered by skin, muscle, bone. Every cut to her skin, every scrape, spilled not just blood, but feeling: grief, anger, guilt. One would think that by now she'd be drained, all but exhausted, but no. Not yet. She kept coming back.

She was waiting for it, though. For the day she finally came up empty. You take an animal from its habitat and place it in an unfamiliar other and again, you reach that forked path. The animal adapts—and lives—or it doesn't, and dies.

Sierra hadn't just adapted. She'd revealed herself as a predator among prey, slaughtering everything in her sight, leaving her alone and starving and with nothing to show for it but the blood on her hands and the hunger in her heart for something—someone—she knew she could never have.

She thinks of Daniel's eyes. In the right light, you can see flecks of green amongst the brown. Jason's eyes, Bruce told her offhandedly the last time they spoke, are green now. Sierra expected as much; she knows the transformative powers of the Pit firsthand, and she sees resurrection in her own gaze, that green like life.

Life is what eludes her, and living like this isn't living at all. Sierra knows this. She must know this, after all this time. After all this death, all this undying.

Jason would know this. He would tell you, if he could.

If he wanted to.

But he doesn't want to, does he?

Something stirs within. Sierra lifts her head, and water drips down her chin, dark like ink, tinted by what's left of her eyeliner.

What she feels now is not something as simple as anger. It is formless and heavy, incorrigible, all-consuming. Most importantly it is malleable, and in Sierra's hands, it becomes a weapon. Of course, she doesn't need a weapon to kill.

But it does make things easier.

Sierra showers, washing Daniel and the night so far away, letting it circle the drain and disappear down the pipes. She dries herself off, pulls on her undergarments, then heads down the hallway and into the spare room. Her suit awaits, folded on the workbench under the window. It is its own work of art. Sierra slips into its familiar shape, her familiar shape, and puts on the mask that covers the lower half of her face.

In an instant, she is no longer Sierra. In an instant, she is Nemesis.

And that's that. She picks a weapon off the wall—a pesh-kabz named Indah, an Indo-Persian knife she has owned since childhood—and, without further thought, leaves the room, climbs back out onto the fire escape, and disappears into the night.

✟

CAPTAIN PHIL MILLER LIVES JUST OUTSIDE EAST END. Nemesis makes quick work of finding his apartment and breaking into it; she's in the living room before one in the morning, good time considering the stops she made along the way. She was swift to find what she needed in Bowery, unwilling to spend more time there than she had to. In East End, and its adjacent neighbourhoods, she doesn't have to worry about the other vigilantes that roam Gotham. Not Nightwing—whose disposition was especially unwelcome and especially exhausting this early in the night—or Batman, who for reasons currently repressed she would like to avoid.

Of course, Dick and Bruce were just slipcovers for the truth, an easy lie to tell herself explaining why she doesn't want to be caught in Bowery. Dick, for one, is in Blüdhaven now; he has been, for a while. Nemesis knew this. And Bruce knew not to come around those parts anymore.

No, the Bowery was Red Hood's territory, and Sierra knew what she was risking just by being there.

Good thing she got what she wanted and got the fuck out, though. Nemesis explores the apartment silently, finding nothing of interest but Miller and his wife, soundly asleep in their bedroom. Snug as a bug in a rug. Nemesis stands at the foot of the bed, watching them sleep for a few minutes. They do not wake at her presence. They do not even stir.

She returns to the living room and gets to work.

In the morning, when the cops are called, when Phil Miller's very own precinct arrives on the scene, they will be horrified. The scene Nemesis will leave for them is stomach-turning, even for Gotham, even for East End.

Even for Phil Miller, who has buried crime scenes like these a dozen times over at Black Mask's bequest, who has buried bodies like these. When he wakes, he follows his normal routine; he lets his wife sleep and shuffles out into the kitchen to make her breakfast. He doesn't notice anything amiss until he goes into the living room to turn on the television for the morning news and finds—bled out, bound, and bashed up on his couch—one John Tyler.

Nemesis had read the file very carefully. And she had listened to Detective Daniel Rosas when he told her.

She was bound and gagged.

He beat her to death.

And left her for the rats.

Nemesis, of course, has an air for theatricality that rivals even Black Mask's sadomasochistic tendencies. The only calling card she leaves is violence. When she ties John Tyler up and positions him on the couch, it is with thick, red rope. When she beats him until he is brain dead, it is with his own pair of knuckles, the same ones he used on Grace White.

When she slits open his throat with Indah and lets him run red red red all over Phil Miller's living room, she does not quite leave him for the rats. But she does leave a message, painted in his blood on the wall behind the couch.

GRACE.

They do find a rat, singular, nibbling on Tyler's mangled nose.

Phil Miller gives his statement to his own detectives. Only when he leaves the precinct, having taken the day off for personal reasons, does it occur to him that he might be next. Black Mask might have a gun pressed to his head, but Nemesis is a bullet.

Clearly, she does not miss.

Sierra Reva is walking through the Upper East Side later that day, on her way to evening mass for the first time in a month. While she waits for the green light at the pedestrian crossing, a digital billboard across the street catches her eye. The Gotham Gazette, always reliable: NEMESIS CLAIMS ANOTHER: GCPD CAPTAIN COMMITS SUICIDE FOLLOWING VIOLENT CRIME SCENE DISCOVERED IN HIS EAST END HOME.

What a fucking baby. No-one wanted to be held accountable anymore. As far as Sierra was concerned, Miller's blood was not on her hands—though, she reasoned, if she were able to take death as an exit, she would. Without hesitation. God, what she'd do for an ending, especially a clean one. But she knows that for herself there is no end, so this is what she settles for instead.

Living like this isn't living at all. Sierra knows this. Still, she smiles, and when the light flashes green, she crosses the street.

𝖎. and that's on mental illness! welcome to the first proper chapter of CRUSH; if you've read this story previously, you probably recognise some elements of the chapter. not the fingering, though! you're welcome for that! 😃😃

𝖎𝖎. jokes aside, i do want to get that out of the way first. CRUSH contains sexual content, as indicated in the introduction chapter. i don't really want to label it as smut, and i don't think daniel and sierra in this chapter even count as smut, but just be aware that (as i am sure you have figured out) sierra is a pretty hypersexual character and this plot very much addresses and portrays that. i really hope it doesn't get corny, especially when it turns more sexual, so please let me know if you think that's the case.

𝖎𝖎𝖎. for the most part, any sexual content will be written in the same way it was here. there won't really be an abundance of drawn-out, smutty sex scenes written from sierra's point-of-view.

𝖎𝖛. that aside, i want to dedicate this chapter to wulfhall who helped inform me for danny rosas' character. paloma, you are amazing 🤍 sierra and i appreciate you very deeply.

𝖛. if you have read CRUSH before, you will not recognise danny. he will be a supporting / minor character throughout the story, and act as sierra's GCPD contact when she cannot directly speak to commissioner gordon. the story opening with him makes him kinda seem like a bigger deal than he is, but danny does not replace levi finch, if you remember him; he [danny] just acts as, as i said, a supporting character who not only assists sierra at points but also serves to illustrate a facet of her relationship with men. you will see these facets demonstrated in the characterisations of danny, eli, levi and jason.

𝖛𝖎. no abundance of sex scenes but an abundance of random male love interests 🤒🤒 let sierra be vindicated. below is a drawing i've done of sierra's main nemesis suit throughout this story. i can't really be bothered to explain it in writing (i feel like it'll be boring and also give the wrong idea) so please visualise this suit when you visualise sierra as nemesis.

𝖛𝖎𝖎. you can also of course refer to this image for her face and general appearance; this is how i picture her.

𝖛𝖎𝖎𝖎. i hope you enjoyed this chapter! i've repositioned sierra a little bit and framed her slightly differently, but the story from here will progress as it has previously; we'll meet eli next, then levi. again, as it was previously, it'll be a slow burn to learn sierra's history. with everything, pretty much. jason, the league, talia, black mask, selina; gotham as a whole. i hope you stick around for it! and for this chapter specifically, i would love to hear your thoughts and feedback, if you have any you would like to share.

𝖎𝖝. again, thank you for reading! have an amazing rest of your night / day / insert measurement of time here.