Lock-Up

In the afternoon sun, even the murky waters of Gotham Bay are beautiful. As he exits the restaurant with Shondra, after being told that she would like to spend more time with him outside of the Slammer, Lyle Bolton is happy. It's not an emotion that he's altogether familiar with. For too long, Lyle Botlon was an angry man who directed his rage at criminality, the only acceptable target for the brutality he could unleash. He channeled his obsession with upholding perfect order into the first Slammer, which was little more than a neurotically-defended series of holding cells, and in which he kept his carefully hoarded prisoners. It wasn't until meeting Dream and receiving the pseudo-god's gift that he realized that his earlier self may not have been entirely sane. Faced with that sobering truth, Lyle had thrown himself into the disciplines of Eastern meditation and sought tranquility in the repetition of memorized mantras. While this certainly helped, his unease with himself prevented general happiness, and for a long time, maybe too long, he'd had to settle for being content. But he's happy, now, more so than he can remember ever having been before, and it's all due to Shondra Kinsolving.

Her question gives him pause, and he turns to face her. "You mean the Slammer? Or the costume?" He shakes his head. "Both, probably, since they're they're two parts of the same thing." He turns away from the water and motions for her to look inland, at the city itself. "I do this - we do this, you, me, and the Gotham Knights... because it's broken. Gotham City is sick, Shondra. It's not healthy and it's only getting worse. When I put on that costume and go cruising for trouble with Deadshot, we're treating the symptoms of that illness. When I'm in the Slammer, with you and the inmates, we're treating the illness itself. The muggers, the rapists, the druglords and pimps, they're poison, and they've been here so long that the city itself is dying. By setting them straight, by fixing them, we cure Gotham City a little bit at a time, crook by crook, crime by crime." He turns back to face her. "But mostly, I do it because it's what I was meant to do, Shondra."