Friday, July 16th, 2009, 03:45
New Jersey
Gotham City
Fashion District
The nightmares started that same night.
Malik jerked awake with Tony Marcelli's face burned into his vision, the man's eyes wide with shock and recognition in the split second before the knife found its mark. In the dream, the blood kept flowing, spreading across the warehouse floor until it reached Malik's feet, warm and sticky and real.
He sat up in bed, breathing hard, checking his hands for blood that wasn't there.
It was just past three in the morning. Outside his window, Gotham hummed with its usual late-night energy, sirens and traffic and the distant sound of someone shouting in the streets below. Normal city sounds that felt comforting compared to the silence of his dream warehouse.
Malik got up and walked to the kitchen, needing water and movement and something to wash away the taste of copper that lingered in his mouth. The apartment was dark except for the dim light filtering in from street lamps, and he found himself checking corners and shadows out of habit.
Three weeks had passed since the trafficking operation. Three weeks of successful nights, careful planning, and growing confidence in his abilities. But the dreams kept coming back, always the same scene played out in different variations. Sometimes Tony shot Selina before Malik could react. Sometimes the knife missed and Tony turned the gun on him. Sometimes there were more guards, more victims, more blood.
Sometimes Malik woke up wondering if he'd enjoyed it more than he should have.
"Can't sleep?" Selina's voice came from the living room, soft but alert.
Malik found her sitting in her chair with a cup of tea, fully dressed despite the hour. She'd been having trouble sleeping too, though she hadn't said anything about it directly.
"Bad dreams," he said, settling into his usual spot across from her.
"Want to talk about it?"
Malik considered the offer. For three weeks, they'd both been pretending that killing Tony Marcelli had been just another part of the job, something to file away and move on from. But the pretending was wearing thin.
"I keep seeing his face," Malik said finally. "Right before it happened. He looked surprised, like he couldn't believe someone would actually fight back."
Selina nodded, understanding in her expression. "The first one stays with you."
"How many people have you killed?"
The question hung in the air between them, more direct than either of them had been willing to be over the past few weeks.
"Fewer than you might think. More than I'd like." Selina's voice carried the weight of experience. "Most problems can be solved without killing anyone. But some people make that choice for you."
"Tony made that choice?"
"Tony pointed a gun at me with the intention of using it. He made that choice the moment he decided other people's lives were worth less than his business interests." Selina leaned forward, her expression serious. "The question isn't whether you should feel guilty about defending yourself and protecting innocent people. The question is how you process what happened so it doesn't destroy you."
That afternoon, Ted noticed the change immediately when Malik arrived for training.
"You're distracted," Ted said, watching Malik work through combinations on the heavy bag. "Your timing's off, your focus is somewhere else. What's going on?"
Malik paused his workout, considering how much to share. Ted had been teaching him to fight, but they'd never discussed the moral implications of actually using those skills against real people.
"I had to hurt someone," Malik said carefully. "Badly. And I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel about it."
Ted studied his face with the attention of someone who'd seen young fighters struggle with similar questions. "You defending yourself or someone else?"
"Someone else. Multiple someone elses, actually."
"And the person you hurt was threatening them?"
"With a gun."
Ted nodded with a sigh, understanding. "Sit down, kid. We need to have a conversation."
They settled on the bench near Ted's office, away from the noise of other gym members working out.
"Fighting's like any other tool," Ted began. "A hammer can build a house or cave in a skull, depending on who's holding it and why they're using it. The tool itself isn't good or evil. The person wielding it, that's where morality comes in."
"So it's about intention?"
"Intention, necessity, and proportionality. You use exactly as much force as required to stop the threat, no more and no less. You don't hit someone because you're angry, you hit them because they're trying to hurt innocent people and that's the only way to make them stop."
Malik thought about Tony Marcelli pulling his gun, about the girls chained in basement rooms, about the split-second decision that had saved Selina's life.
"How do you know the difference?"
"By asking yourself who benefits from your actions. If you're protecting people who can't protect themselves, if you're stopping someone from causing harm, if you're using violence as a last resort when all other options have been exhausted, then you're probably making the right choice." Ted's expression grew serious. "But if you're hurting people because you can, because you enjoy it, because you want to prove how tough you are, then you've lost your way."
"What if it's both? What if you're protecting people but part of you enjoys the power of being able to hurt someone who deserves it?"
Ted was quiet for a long moment, considering the complexity of the question.
"That's human nature, kid. We're wired to feel satisfaction when we stop bad people from doing bad things. The key is making sure that satisfaction doesn't become the primary motivation." Ted's voice carried hard-earned wisdom. "The moment you start looking forward to hurting people, even people who deserve it, that's when you need to step back and reevaluate what you're doing."
That evening, Selina found Malik in his room reading a book about criminal psychology, one of the texts Dr. Sanchez had recommended for his independent study.
"Learning anything useful?" she asked, settling into the chair by his desk.
"I'm trying to understand the difference between criminals who kill because they have to and criminals who kill because they want to." Malik closed the book, marking his place. "Dr. Sanchez keeps talking about how exposure to violence can desensitize people, make them more likely to use it as a first resort instead of a last one."
"And you're worried that's happening to you?"
"I'm worried that I liked it too much. Stopping Tony, I mean. It felt..." Malik searched for words. "It felt like justice. Like I was evening the odds for people who never had a fair chance."
Selina nodded, recognizing the sentiment. "That feeling, that sense of balance being restored, that's not wrong. But it can be dangerous if you let it become your primary motivation."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the world is full of injustice, and if you start thinking it's your job to personally correct every wrong through violence, you'll become something you don't want to be." Selina's voice carried the weight of personal experience. "I've seen it happen to people who started with good intentions."
"Is that what happened to you?"
The question was more personal than Malik had intended, but Selina didn't deflect.
"I started stealing because I was hungry and desperate. Foster care wasn't working out, I aged out of the system with no skills and no support, and I needed money to survive." Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Malik could hear the old pain underneath. "At first, it was pure selfishness. I took what I needed and didn't care who it belonged to."
"What changed?"
"I got good at it. Good enough that I didn't need to steal to survive anymore. But by then, I'd seen how the system really worked. How wealth and power protected people who hurt others while leaving victims with no recourse." Selina's expression grew thoughtful. "That's when I started choosing my targets more carefully. Instead of stealing from whoever had something I wanted, I started stealing from people who were using their wealth to harm others."
"Like Morrison and his clients."
"Like Morrison and his clients. Like the trafficking operation. Like the dozens of other targets I've hit over the years who thought money made them untouchable."
Malik considered this evolution from desperate theft to purposeful action. "So you developed a code."
"Everyone develops a code eventually, whether they admit it or not. The question is whether your code serves something bigger than just your own immediate interests."
"What's your code?"
"Protect people who can't protect themselves. Take from those who abuse their power. Never hurt innocent people in pursuit of guilty ones. And never lose sight of the difference between justice and revenge."
That night, Malik lay in bed thinking about codes and intentions, about the weight of having taken a life and the responsibility that came with the power to do it again. The nightmares were still there, but they felt different now. Less like guilt and more like recognition of the gravity of what he'd done.
Tony Marcelli had died because he'd chosen to threaten innocent people. The girls from the trafficking operation were free because Malik had been willing to use violence to protect them. Those weren't contradictory facts; they were part of the same moral equation.