History Fanfic / PartOfTheNight

* MythologyGag: Trying to get [[spoiler:Nigma]] to leave them alone with his demands for Batman's true identity, Jen claims that Batman was [[ComicBook/Azrael Jean Paul Valley]].

* MythologyGag: Trying to get [[spoiler:Nigma]] to leave them alone with his demands for Batman's true identity, Jen claims that Batman was Jean Paul Valley.

* AdaptationalRelationshipOverhaul: In the comics, [[spoiler:Stephanie Brown was a relatively distant member of the Bat-Family at best, but here she is Bruce and Selina's adopted daughter]].

* CanonImmigrant: [[spoiler:Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Edward Nygma and Amanda Waller appear, with Nygma an [=FBI=] profiler attempting to ‘prove’ that Bruce is/was Batman while Stephanie is adopted by Bruce and Selina around the time the Drakes return to the re-opened Gotham (Waller is stil the head of Cadmus, although this version appears less blatantly amoral than some interpretations)]].

* CanonImmigrant: [[spoiler:Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown and Edward Nygma appear, with Nygma an [=FBI=] profiler attempting to ‘prove’ that Bruce is/was Batman while Stephanie is adopted by Bruce and Selina around the time the Drakes return to the re-opened Gotham]].

** It's established just who Gordon was referring to by his "five dead, two of them cops" remark to Batman after Dent died. While watching Bane liberate the prisoners, Bruce tells Selina that Dent was unofficially responsible for the deaths of the two police officers guarding him at the hospital, plus Wuertz, Salvatore Maroni, Maroni's bodyguard, and Maroni's chauffeur. His information is not entirely accurate, though, as while it's true that Dent killed Wuertz, plus Maroni and his bodyguards, the two cops at the hospital were actually killed by the Joker (although since their bodies were destroyed in the explosion, and Dent didn't have any witnesses who saw him leave the hospital, no one was able to positively link those deaths to the Joker). Bruce and Gordon considered Wuertz too crooked to be an actual cop, so is the reason they didn't count him among the dead cops. It's also mentioned that Ramirez survived Harvey pistol-whipping her, and Gordon made her resign from the force afterwards.

* DeathByAdaptation: Barsad dies much earlier in this story than in the movie. Here, Bruce and Selina kill him once Bruce's back has been able to heal. Selina holds him by the legs while Bruce breaks his neck. In the original movie, he lasted all the way to the final battle, where Foley gunned him down with a rifle taken off of one of Bane's other soldiers.

* ForWantOfANail: Everything changes because Selina decides to offer Bruce a bit more advice when he comes to visit her after he is declared bankrupt, rather than just arranging for Batman to be sent into Bane's planned trap.

** The next day, things change further as Bruce is at home along with Selina when Blake shows up looking for Bruce's input on Daggett's permits for underground construction. After reading through the information, Bruce realizes that Bane is planning to steal his armory from Wayne Enterprises, and confirms that by having Selina conduct tests on the Applied Sciences floor, which confirm the presence of explosives underneath and a hollow cavity indicative of the new room. Bruce arranges for Rachel's uncle and Fox to relocate the Applied Sciences weapons to a safe place where he can access them and which Bane is unaware of, while letting Bane think he had the arsenal sunk.

** Bane is working on a schedule, since he's timed the explosions to happen around and during the football game. Bruce's little deception trick costs him valuable time. Because Bruce showed up a day late, Bane loses the day he had had that he would've used to have Bruce flown to the Middle East and thrown in the Pit. So he resorts to having Bruce and Selina thrown in Dr. Pavel's old cell and have a TV brought in from Daggett's penthouse. Likewise, Bane also has his men raid military armories to steal weapons and vehicles as a last minute replacement for Bruce's armory, allowing him to still enact his siege of Gotham on the original schedule.

** Selina being imprisoned alongside Bruce leads to her observing behavior from Bane that makes Miranda Tate's betrayal less out of left field for Bruce. Helping this is that she does some snooping around and happens to catch Miranda meeting alone with Bane.

* KansasCityShuffle: Bruce has been able to pull one on Bane when it comes to protect his armory. He lets Bane think he had his Applied Sciences toys taken out of Wayne Enterprises and sunk at sea, but the containers that sunk were completely empty and the real ones were moved to near Bruce's temporary Batcave.

** Richard Daniel, a bank official from the Batman comic ''The Long Halloween'', is the banker with whom Bruce and Selina take out a loan to restore electricity to Wayne Manor. Bruce is not too fond of him owing to his attempts to hit on Rachel back in the day. He later is executed after being hauled before Dr. Crane's KangarooCourt.

*** The doctor Bruce saw on his visit to Gordon in the first part of the movie is revealed to be Thompkins' great-nephew Matthew Thorne, and he is named after a lesser known Batman villain known as "The Crime Doctor".

* OneDegreeOfSeparation: Selina had dug up blackmail dirt on some of the Wayne board members, one of whom (Daniel Mockridge) was driven to suicide. When she mentions the board member in question while being questioned by Blake, Blake mentions that he was the one who caught Mockridge's suicide investigation.

* SecretSecretKeeper: It turns out that the other Major Crimes detectives figured out very quickly the lies that Gordon had made about Batman killing Harvey Dent, but said nothing because they knew that Gordon and Batman had done so with the purpose of ensuring that the case against the mobsters didn't fall apart. Stephens confirmed it from talking to Ramirez after Gordon made her resign from the force for her role in Rachel's death.

* WrongSideOfTheTracks: When Jen points out to Selina that Bruce is smitten with her, Selina [[ObliviousToLove denies her feelings]], saying "The only time a guy like Wayne ends up with a girl from our side of the river is in romance novels. No, it'll be Miranda Tate next to Bruce Wayne in the engagement announcement pages."

* CanonImmigrant: [[spoiler:Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown and Edward Nygma appear, with Nygma an [=FBI=] agent attempting to ‘prove’ that Bruce is/was Batman while Stephanie is adopted by Bruce and Selina around the time the Drakes return to the re-opened Gotham]].

* DarkAndTroubledPast: When Selina was 12, she and her sister Jen (back then using her birth name Magdelene "Magpie" Kyle) lost their parents in a car accident, and they ended up in the Willowwood Home for Children, a group home that was notorious for child sexual abuse. After two years of protecting her sister, Selina decided to do something about it and stole evidence from the group home's director to take to child protective services, who shut down the group home. Selina then parted ways from her sister for several years. Maggie was thrown into foster care, one bad home abused her, and she fell in with a pedophile ring. When Selina found out, she used whatever savings she had built up to shut down the pedophile ring and get its victims the help they needed. Maggie changed her name to Jen Robinson to cut herself off completely from that life. Selina wants to help Jen further by using the [=CleanSlate=] program to completely erase anythng else that connects her to those days.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/897007 The One Rule]]'': Batman has one rule he will never break, and there is one thing Selina Kyle will never steal. An AU depicting how the second and third acts of ''The Dark Knight Rises'' would've gone if Selina had decided to warn Bruce that Bane was setting a trap for Batman.

** It's established just who Gordon was referring to by his "five dead, two of them cops" remark to Batman after Dent died. While watching Bane liberate the prisoners, Bruce tells Selina that Dent was responsible for the deaths of the two police officers guarding him at the hospital, plus Wuertz, Salvatore Maroni, Maroni's bodyguard, and Maroni's chauffeur. His information is not entirely accurate, though, as while it's true that Dent killed Wuertz, plus Maroni and his bodyguards, the two cops at the hospital were actually the work of the Joker (although since their bodies were destroyed in the explosion, and Dent didn't have any witnesses who saw him leave the hospital, no one was able to positively link those deaths to the Joker).

* OneDegreeOfSeparation: Selina had dug up blackmail dirt on some of the Wayne board members, one of whom was driven to suicide. When she mentions the board member in question while being questioned by Blake, Blake mentions that he was the one who caught Mockridge's suicide investigation.

* ReplacementGoldfish: Selina regards Miranda Tate with a lot of suspicion, which Bruce takes initially to be jealousy until she points out Miranda is trying to get close to him by channeling Rachel Dawes' idealism.

** The bedtime story Blake tells Ross's daughter in chapter 14 is Blake retelling the events of Ra's al-Ghul's attempted bioterrorism on Gotham, in the style of a medieval fantasy. The descriptions Blake uses make clear that he was the boy that stumbled upon Ra's and his fake SWAT henchmen, and whom Rachel shielded as Ra's released his hallucinogens into the Narrows.

** Because of Selina's tip, Bruce puts off going to confront Bane by about a full day. As a result, he's at home when Blake visits the house to ask for his help about deciphering Daggett's permits for underground construction. Bruce, Blake and Selina read through the information, and Bruce realizes that Bane is about to steal his armory from Wayne Enterprises. So as a result, he has Fox work with Rachel's uncle to relocate the Applied Sciences weapons to a safe place where he can access them and which Bane is unaware of, while letting Bane think he had the arsenal sunk. So the next day, when he confronts Bane and they have their fight, Bane is angered to find that Bruce was one step ahead of him. And because he lost the day that he had in the movie to have Bruce flown to the Middle East and thrown in the pit (he's operating on a schedule, the explosions being timed around the football game), coupled with needing to find an alternate armory at the last minute (he settles to stealing from military installations), Bane has to simply throw Bruce and Selina in Dr. Pavel's old cell and have a TV brought in from Daggett's penthouse.
** Selina being imprisoned alongside Bruce leads to her observing behavior from Bane that makes Miranda Tate's betrayal less out of left field for Bruce.

** Bruce and Selina have this sort of sex upon escaping their prison cell and relocating to the batcave Bruce had used in ''The Dark Knight''.
* HeHadAName: Bruce strongly opposed the Dent Act being named in Harvey Dent's honor, given Harvey's fall from grace and the crimes he'd committed after the Joker brainwashed him. He also felt that calling it the Dent Act ignored the many sacrifices Rachel made, an important thing for him seeing as Rachel was his childhood best friend.

** Despite the curveball thrown when Bruce gets his armory removed from Wayne Enterprises, Bane is still able to lay siege to Gotham. He just has to have his men raid a military armory to acquire Hummers in lieu of Tumblers.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/897007 The One Rule]]'': Batman has one rule he will never break, and there is one thing Selina Kyle will never steal. An alternate take on the second and third acts of ''The Dark Knight Rises''.

** The cab driver that takes Bruce, Selina and Jen to the airport as part of a plan to distract the men Bane has watching them recalls the time Bruce took Russian ballet to party on his yacht (to give Bruce an alibi when he was extracting Lau).

-->'''Bruce Wayne:''' {{She's not my girlfriend.}} ''[Now she crossed her arms]''

* WrongSideOfTheTracks: When Jen points out to Selina that Bruce is smitten with her, Selina denies her feelings, saying "The only time a guy like Wayne ends up with a girl from our side of the river is in romance novels. No, it'll be Miranda Tate next to Bruce Wayne in the engagement announcement pages."

* AdaptedOut: Owing to the investigative work as well as getting his equipment out of Applied Sciences, Bruce's showdown with Bane happens a day later than it did in the movie. Since Bane's plan for laying siege to Gotham involve setting off the explosives during the football game, he ends up losing the day that he had in the movie to have Bruce flown out to the Pit for imprisonment. Coupled with needing to find an alternate armory since Bruce stashed it away, Bane needs to get his plans back on schedule. So he settles for imprisoning Bruce and Selina in Dr. Pavel's old cell. This is lampshaded by Bane as his men are bringing in the TV for the cell:

** A related consequence of this is that the prison doctor who provided Bruce with necessary exposition about Bane doesn't appear in the story at all. Barsad takes up the role of relaying the story of the warlord's daughter. While the job of figuring out Bane's mask and weakness ends up going to Selina.

** New storylines are created that show Bane's occupation from the perspectives of other civilians, the press, and the cops trapped in the sewers.

** It even turns out that Rachel's death was at least partially a reason why Bruce was opposed to the Dent Act, as shown by a flashback:

** Mike, as it turns out, lost his job at GCN as a result of the ordeal with the Joker, and has been living off his severance and the proceeds from a tell-all book he wrote about the Joker's rise to power, ''Terror With a Smile: The Clown Prince of Crime's Reign of Gotham City''.

* ClingyJealousGirl: Selina regards Miranda Tate with a lot of suspicion despite only a few brief interactions with her. This turns out to be a good thing after her betrayal happens.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Selina and Jen's pasts. When Selina was 12, she and Jen (back then using her birth name Magdelene Kyle) lost their parents in a car accident, and they ended up in the Willowwood Home for Children, a group home that was notorious for child sexual abuse. After two years of protecting her sister, Selina decided to do something about it and stole evidence from the group home's director to take to child protective services, who shut down the group home. Selina then parted ways from her sister for several years. Maggie was thrown into foster care, one bad home abused her, and she fell in with a pedophile ring. When Selina found out, she used whatever savings she had built up to shut down the pedophile ring and get its victims the help they needed. Maggie changed her name to Jen Robinson to cut herself off completely from that life. Selina wants to help Jen further by using the [=CleanSlate=] program to completely erase anythng else that connects her to those days.
* DeathByAdaptation: Barsad dies much earlier in this story than in the movie. Here, Bruce and Selina kill him upon freeing themselves from their cell.[[note]]In the original movie, he lasted all the way to the final battle, where Foley gunned him down with a rifle taken off of one of Bane's other soldiers.[[/note]]

** Renee Montoya, a member of the Major Crimes Unit in the comics, is one of the cops tasked by Foley with rescuing the Wayne Enterprises executives alongside Simon Jensen and Kelly, the two cops from the Stock Exchange car chase that were the first to witness Batman's return. The three end up trapped in the tunnels just behind a rockfall from where Bruce and Selina are caged.

** Blake takes up vigilantism and uses the codename Nightwing, the name Dick Grayson used when he moved on from being Batman's vigilante partner Robin. Remember that Blake's full name is Robin John Blake.
*** For that matter, Blake is referred to by several nicknames associated with Robin. Selina calls him "Boy Wonder" at one point, and Blake uses the Robin name when telling a bedtime story to Ross's daughter Tara.

* TrappedInVillainy: Daggett has been controlling Selina by using "one last job before you get the Clean Slate" remarks to get her to do his dirty work for him. Stealing Bruce's fingerprints is the last straw for Selina and is the reason she used the Congressman as 'insurance' for her meeting with Stryver.

** After witnessing the tunnels being barricaded, Mike Engle recalls Batman rescuing him from the Joker's hostage situation and wonders where he might be.

** Selina's background and how she got involved with Daggett is explored. Daggett had recruited Selina to spy on Wayne Enterprises board members and gather dirt on four of them, Veronica Vreeland, Daniel Mockridge, Karl Rossum, and Douglas Fredericks; dirt that Daggett later used to blackmail them. He blackmailed Vreeland and Rossum into quitting the board, while Mockridge was driven to suicide.

** Dr. Leslie Thompkins, one of Thomas Wayne's closest friends at the hospital, makes an appearance here, before taking a larger role in ''The Wayne Legacy''. Meanwhile, the doctor Bruce saw on his visit to Gordon in the first part of the movie is revealed to be Thompkins' great-nephew Matthew Thorne, who is named after a lesser known Batman villain known as "The Crime Doctor".

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Miranda Tate's betrayal of Bruce goes much differently here compared to in the original movie. In this case, it's because Selina is imprisoned alongside Bruce. While Bane is in charge of all these men, the way he reacts to learning that Bruce has anticipated and thwarted his efforts to acquire the Wayne Enterprises arsenal leads Selina to realize that there's someone else who's calling the shots.

* DeathByAdaptation: Barsad dies much earlier in this story than in the movie. Here, Bruce and Selina kill him upon freeing themselves from their cell. In the original movie, he lasted all the way to the final battle, where Foley gunned him down with a rifle taken off of one of Bane's other soldiers.

* AdaptationExpansion: New storylines are created that show Bane's occupation from the perspectives of other civilians, the press, and the cops trapped in the sewers.

** Because of Selina's tip, Bruce puts off going to confront Bane by about a full day. As a result, he's at home when Blake visits the house to ask for his help about deciphering Daggett's permits for underground construction. Bruce, Blake and Selina read through the information, and Bruce realizes that Bane is about to steal his armory from Wayne Enterprises. So as a result, he has Fox work with Rachel's uncle to relocate the Applied Sciences weapons to a safe place. So the next day, when he confronts Bane and they have their fight, Bane is angered to find that Bruce was one step ahead of him. And because he lost the day that he had in the movie to have Bruce flown to the Middle East and thrown in the pit (he's operating on a schedule, the explosions being timed around the football game). Coupled with needing to find an alternate armory at the last minute (he settles to stealing from military installations), Bane has to simply throw Bruce and Selina in Dr. Pavel's old cell and have a TV brought in from Daggett's penthouse.

* HowDidYouKnowIDidnt: This is going on when Blake shows up at Wayne Manor to talk to Bruce about Daggett's underground construction work only to be greeted at the door by Selina, who he's also supposed to bring in for the Congressman's kidnapping. Selina understandably calls for Bruce to come diffuse the situation and talk Blake out of arresting her. He has to ask if Blake was looking for her as a test to find out just how much danger Selina and Jen might be in.

** Selina's reaction when being told of Daggett's death by Blake, as his broken neck is the very sort of fate that Bane's men have threatened her and Jen with.

* TheBusCameBack: Several characters from ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' who were still alive at the end of that, and didn't feature in ''The Dark Knight Rises'', reappear. Mike Engle gets a few appearances, bearing witness to Bane's men stacking cars to barricade the tunnels, and later reporting on the "trials" at Crane's tribunal. Gerard Stephens, one of the few trusted cops in Gordon's unit during the Joker spree, also reappears as one of the few cops left on the surface to aid Gordon's small resistance movement.

-->'''Mayor Garcia:''' Mr. Wayne, I thought you--out of all the citizens of Gotham--would support this Act. After all, Harvey was your friend.

-->'''Mayor Garcia:''' We covered those statistics in the public debates over the Dent Act, Mr. Wayne. Yes, it increases the population of Blackgate Prison for years, but no one will be able to fill the gangland power vacuum left by the Joker's murder spree.

-->'''Mayor Garcia:''' And it's all a moot point. The Dent Act was signed into law yesterday.

** It's established just who Gordon was referring to by his "five dead, two of them cops" remark to Batman after Dent died. While watching Bane liberate the prisoners, Bruce tells Selina that Dent was responsible for the deaths of the two police officers guarding him at the hospital, plus Wuertz, Salvatore Maroni, Maroni's bodyguard, and Maroni's chauffeur. His information is not entirely accurate, though, as while it's true that Dent killed Wuertz, plus Maroni and his bodyguards, the two cops at the hospital were actually the work of the Joker.

* DeathByAdaptation: Barsad dies much earlier in this story than in the original. Here, Bruce and Selina kill him upon freeing themselves from their cell. In the original movie, he lasted all the way to the final battle, where he was gunned down by Foley.
* EveryoneHasStandards: Selina makes this clear multiple times during her initial recruitment by Bruce. Among other rules, she doesn't sleep with clients to protect her reputation. She doesn't do things like lead people to their deaths. When explaining to Bruce and Blake her actions with the Congressman, she has to clarify that she didn't sleep with him at all while using him as leverage:

* HeHadAName: Bruce's attitude opposing the Dent Act is shown in a flashback to be because the Act ignores Rachel's sacrifices.

* KillEmAll: Before the river freezes over, those at Crane's tribunal who pick "death" are shot and buried in mass graves.
* TheLostLenore: Selina remarks that research shows how Bruce's dating life was drastically impacted by Rachel's death, and how Miranda Tate is tailoring herself to fit the kind of personality Bruce might want to go out with.

** Richard Daniel, a bank official from the Batman comic ''The Long Halloween'', is the banker with whom Bruce and Selina take out a loan to restore electricity to Wayne Manor. He later is executed after being hauled before Dr. Crane's KangarooCourt.

** Blake takes up vigilantism and uses the codename Nightwing, the name Dick Grayson used when he moved on from being Batman's vigilante partner Robin.
** Vicki Vale is established to be the reporter who tries to ask the mayor about the police raiding the sewers before the football game.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Miranda Tate's betrayal of Bruce goes much differently here compared to in the original movie. In this case, it's because Selina is imprisoned alongside Bruce. While Bane is in charge of all these men, the way he reacts to learning that Bruce has anticipated and thwarted his efforts to acquire the Wayne Enterprises armory leads Selina to realize that there's someone else who's calling the shots.
-->'''Selina Kyle:''' How can someone be in charge yet act like a flunkey?

-->'''Selina Kyle:''' That's what's bothering me about Bane. You say he's Ra's kid and that's why these Ghulites are following him. And he's throwing his weight around when there's an audience. ''[motions to the television]'' But when you told him you sank all your toys, he acted just like a flunkey.

-->'''Selina Kyle:''' Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but he left, just like a flunkey does when I've thrown them a curve ball the boss didn't prepare them for. They always need a few minutes for a conference.
-->'''Bruce Wayne:''' Dealt with a lot of flunkeys?

** Selina's reaction when being told of Daggett's death by Blake, as that sort of fate is what Bane's men have threatened her and Jen with.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: This fic gives an answer as to what happened to Anna Ramirez, after Harvey went after her. A conversation between Gordon and Stephens after Bane begins his revolution establishes that she survived being pistol-whipped, and was forced by Gordon to resign in disgrace afterwards.

** A related consequence of this is that the prison doctor who provided Bruce with necessary exposition about Bane doesn't appear in the story at all. Barsad takes up the role of relaying the story of the warlord's daughter. While the job of figuring out Bane's mask ends up going to Selina.