You're in a cave, worn into a cliff above a river. It's pouring, and cold. You scrounged some clothes from a village nearby. It's been a week since - since you woke up.
You still ache, all over, and you still feel like you can taste those waters in your mouth, the taste of evil, ripping at your cells. You see better, move quicker, and hit harder than you ever did before. Someone tried to jump you in the village, and you knocked them out with a single punch. Your muscles jump and twitch, too strong, too perfect, too completely fixed. Time will slow them down a little.
In your lap is a portable TV you took from a trash heap. Only half the screen works. You pull up the antennae, clutch them in your fists, and watch for news.
You have to know.
You're not sure how you're going to get back to the States. You need to get to a phone, but you still don't know what you'll say, how you'll explain, how you could say anything, even if you can manage to get through.
Then, on the screen, there he is.
Same smile. Same laugh. The reception is fuzzy, but even in this part of the world, they care what's happening in your city, report on its thousand tragedies. You don't understand the language, but it doesn't matter. They show rows of oil drums and a burning building.
He's alive. More people are dead.
You let go of the antenna, and pull your scraggly blanket closer around yourself. You're shaking. You can't seem to get warm. You won't be calling anyone.
You stand, and hurl the little TV out of the cave, into the river below. You step out into the rain and you scream, soaked to the bone, and no one hears you. Because no one cares. No one ever cared. Not about you, not about the people like you, the people that that man kills all the time. Not even the person who always said he'd save them, the person who tried to save you, really cared. Because if he did, if he did, the man on the TV would be dead.
You scream until you can't scream anymore. It takes a long time. You'll tear his house down around him. You'll make him understand, force him by whatever means necessary, and you'll take care of things yourself from now on. His rules, the law, the world never cared, never lifted a finger to help. And you know then that you never mattered to the one person who was supposed to care, to love you.
But you'll make up for it. You'll tear through Gotham's streets until the asphalt is slicked scarlet and everyone is safe. And you'll get revenge for everyone he ever failed. All the dead people. All the dead people, like you.