My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself?

FERNANDO PESSOA / The Book of Disquiet

In a gilded cage a bird sings with blood in its mouth. It sings because it knows that once it stops, it's as good as dead.

Similar ideology can be found in all those unfortunate enough to call Gotham their home. If there is one absolute to know it is that learning to fight is the key to survival. The beast dressed in the guise of a city has no use for bright eyed hatchlings that cannot survive its horrors. And so Gotham forges it's offspring in the only way it knows how: through sin, brutality, and misfortune. The song of the city is a savage one, and it would gladly drown those who cannot sing along. Viciously tearing into the meat of the feeble and leave what remains of the corpses discarded in the gutters.

Lourdes Herrera had learned from a young age to match the pain and viciousness of the city with her own.

Gotham is a harsh teacher that had taught her many terrible but useful lessons. The first is that the city does not care in its heart for those that are different. That much was made clear to her in her younger years when her metahuman powers began to develop. When her mother would pull her younger brother away from her and yell at her for things she couldn't control. Her parents wasted no time in leaving her to rot in a city that would rather see her dead.

The second lesson that Gotham taught her arrives a short time later, When her clothes are torn and the hunger sets in, making her wild like a mad dog. The lesson is that even though Gotham tries to kill off those it doesn't think can survive it there are always the outliers. Oddities in the natural order of things. These rare birds somehow always manage to find each other. Such is true when a man extends a kind hand to young Lourdes and offered her a home, recognizing himself in the ostracized young girl left to die. To Lourdes this man will always be Oswald Cobblepot, but to the dark and despot souls that haunt Gotham's criminal underbelly he will forever be known as The Penguin.

Oswald wastes no time in turning her into his perfect little soldier. Lourdes trades in weak and wanting hands for palms filled with weapons, and pain for power. This was her life now. From flitting back and forth from Cobblepot Manor to large and fanciful concert halls to perform for Gotham's elite and most corrupted. And when the cover of night fell she plays the role of the Penguin's ever loyal enforcer.

In this line of work running into the infamous vigilante known as Batman was a given. And though quite the fighter he was nothing a powerful metahuman like Lourdes couldn't handle. The real trouble comes in the form of Dick Grayson. The beloved son of Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham and the news takes the city by storm, taking the heat off Lourdes and her nightly activities. Grayson's plenty of good looking and he's got a charismatic disposition, the perfect distraction Lourdes needed to take her mind off of her double life as a masked assailant.

While things appear to be going well for Lourdes in her romantic life things get much more complicated in the vigilante world with the arrival of a new and rather annoying hero donning the colors of black & blue; calling himself Nightwing. The seemingly new vigilante has thrown himself back into the cage known as Gotham, under the scrutinizing and watchful eye of Batman. Despite all the painful memories being in the city dregs up it would seem Nightwing has not forgotten how to sing with blood in his mouth.

As lines are drawn and blurred one chord rings true throughout the madness. War is coming to Gotham. It's coming for everyone. Hero and villain alike. And Lourdes Herrera above all else....

Is determined to be the last bird standing.

Adria Arjona as
Lourdes Herrera......
THE SONGBIRD

I am an open wound — woman discarded
and woman emerging. Scars devise scars.

Jesús Castro as
Dick Grayson......
ROBIN I/NIGHTWING

How I love to have no armor here.
You wish you could hold me at knifepoint again.

FEATURING......

Benicio Del Toro as
Oswald Cobblepott......
THE PENGUIN

Oscar Isaac as
Bruce Wayne......
THE BATMAN

Chloe Bennet as
Barbara Gordon......
BATGIRL I/ORACLE

Jay Lycurgo as
Tim Drake......
ROBIN III

🐧  hello everyone! i am back with another new project that hopefully won't flop this time, and im stepping back into the world of dc. i know it's been a while but im excited to try and get back into the headspace of writing so let's see how this goes.

🐧  this book kind of doesn't really belong anywhere in canon and it's pretty much an au but just know for sure that 1) barbara gordon is in her chair as oracle and hasn't been batgirl in a long time 2) tim is the current robin not yet red robin and 3) dick has been operating solo as nightwing in bludhaven for some time now.

🐧  this fic is an old idea of mine that originally was going to be for titans! nightwing but with the direction the show went i really didn't want to write this into the show so im writing it as it's own au.
unease concerto is going to be a very fun and mysterious kind of drama filled, gothic, opera type story that i feel is befitting a batman-esque story and after watching The Batman (2022) it just further solidified my vision of gotham and the overall vibe i wanted for this story. so while this doesn't connect nor take place in matt reeves batman universe i guess you can draw inspo for gotham's feel from the movie. except for the iceberg lounge. my version of the iceberg lounge in here is very much like how it is in the comics which is a very classy restaurant/club for the rich and the corrupt.

🐧  as you can glean from the summary my girl lourdes is indeed a metahuman and her powers are a pretty interesting mix that im super proud of. i don't want to speak too much on it just yet cause i really want it to be a very dramatic reveal but it's really cool, lourdes is very powerful, and her gift is enough to cause the batfam a lot of problems.

🐧  major thanks to my long time friend grndelwald who helped me get everything in order with oswald and initially figuring things out with the cobblepott family. she has seen this story go through so many changes since it's conception. thank you so much for all the love, support, and help.

🐧 i dedicate this fic to the curran walters fanclub
( bayports / elysianfieId / metalbenders )
thank you guys so much for all of the love and support and for pushing me to release this. ive had y'all waiting for like months and now it's finally here. special shout-out to park, not just for all the amazing graphics you've made for this book but also all of the countless hours of messages, being my sounding board, and just being such an overall joy to be friends with. i may make fun of you for your taste in comic book men, especially wally west (i still have The Panel saved) since he can't ever seem to look good except once every 40 comic books he appears in but i do it all from a place of love. thank you so much for everything.

  🚩 CONTENT WARNING: depictions of violence, some coarse language, brief/mild sexual situations, body horror, torture, and child abuse (in flashbacks of character backstory)