Just Breathe

Chapter 4

Three days later, Beth spotted the headline in her newsfeed:

GCPD Detective Confesses to Wife's Murder.

According to the article, Detective Harlow had handed himself in and was immediately arrested on charges of first degree murder.

Beth smiled. He'd done it. Batman had managed to get Harlow to confess.

She didn't care how he'd done it. It wasn't her place to judge the depths of the violence he resorted to...not when she was the one who had put him on Harlow's scent in the first place.

The important thing was that Jessica Harlow and her family were given justice.

She had used her abilities for good, and it had worked out.

Objectively, she knew her gift was extraordinary. She didn't know how or why she was able to do what she did, it had always just been a part of her. And as extraordinary as it was, it was a gift she resented. Even hated at times. Because it stopped her from living a normal, full life.

But occasionally, it brought some good to the world; and the feeling of satisfaction she got from that outweighed the resentment...at least for a while.

Until the guilt set in.

Guilt that she should be doing more. That she should be working as an interrogator or a spy, using her abilities to put people behind bars or discover world-changing secrets.

But she knew that kind of life would not be sustainable. Diving deep into other people's thoughts and memories took its toll. The disorientation it sometimes caused faded quickly, but there was another - more long lasting - effect.

She held on to others' memories as if they were her own.

They stayed a part of her.

And she worried that she'd eventually take on so many other memories that she would forget which ones were her own and which ones were stolen. That she would lose the core of who she was. That Beth Carraway would become just another one of many in her psyche.

It was probably an irrational fear...but how would she know? As far as she was aware, no one else in the world could do what she did.

So instead, she'd decided to pursue a profession that she loved, rather than one which benefited from her abilities. She was fascinated by the human body, and all the ways it could go wrong. And whilst some considered her chosen speciality of pathology macabre, she loved the investigative nature of it. A dead body was like a crime scene, providing her with clues that she used to solve the mystery behind the tragedy.

Although sometimes - like today - the deaths were not quite so mysterious.

She picked up her clipboard and started the external examination of the body in front of her. The young man had been found under the Crown Point Bridge, tourniquet around his arm and a heroin needle protruding from his veins.

Straight forward and mundane...but still a tragic waste.

Just as she was about to ask her assistant to turn the body over, a faint blue mark on the left arm caught her attention. She angled the overhead light closer to take a proper look and gasped when she realised what she was seeing.

It was the bruising pattern that Gordon and Batman had been looking for last year.

She put down her clipboard and tore off her gloves.

She had a phone call to make.

———

"Thanks for coming," Gordon said as he switched off the signal light.