Random oneshot minifics. This is the first. Taking a break from Phoenix as I attempt to figure it out... Sorry guys! Update: Sorry for not mentioning this, but I got the prompt from this website: teland livia / dc _ scenarios . html
Aspirations
When I was six, I wanted to be a pilot.
It's funny, how quickly things change and you have absolutely no control over them.
Funny enough to remember, even, the picture of the red plane that Jarvis looked over, his moustache curling with amusement at the misshapen wings, patting me on the head while my mother reclined on the sofa with curlers in her hair.
And then a few years passed, and I was walking home, the shadows cast by streetlamps on every road, dancing in between gutters with my parents, reliving the best scenes of the Mark of Zorro.
A shout.
The shiny barrel of a gun.
Two shots.
And the next thing I knew I was cradling the two beads of what remained of my mother's pearl necklace, the rest drizzling like so many snowflakes into the void, through a gap in sanity.
Insanity.
That was Joe Chill, the shade of a man.
To this day I don't know why he did it.
Just that he did.
The blood on my hands was the colour of that ages-ago airplane, of my aspirations shattered, dreams lost.
Then I found meaning.
Vengeance.
To aid people in getting what was coming to them. I grew up, and I left Gotham. But not for good.
Bruce Wayne left... Batman returned.
The black garb I wear now is my mourning, is sorrow, is loves lost, is loves gained.
The blank white lenses are my shield to the world.
After I started being Batman, I realised that suddenly, I know I never wanted to be a pilot all along.
The shadows are my world, the one that I've trained my eyes to adjust to all this while. I never thought about being anyone else.
Somehow I know I'm built for this.
At first, new, I was inexperienced, perhaps.
I got shot a few times by GCPD officers.
The law was definitely not on my side.
But I gained allies, constructed that facade of indestructibility, the other mask that, till today, only a few have been able to penetrate.
I sought Chill out, gave him a dose of his very own nightmares.
I didn't cross the line, though, not like he did, so many years ago.
I tried to make peace with my demons. Yet still the sense of accomplishment, of fulfillment, evaded me.
My work was not over. It never will be.
So, perhaps out of pity I found refuge in companionship, hoping that solitude would not be the only way I knew how to live, that perhaps I could pass on my mission to others. It worked.
Or seemed to.
Dick became Nightwing.
Jason died.
Tim joined the Titans.
Stephanie was short-lived.
Damian remains as distant a son to me as I am to the world.
"...Father?" I look up.
"Yes?"
"Father... when you were young, did you ever consider being... something else?"
He tugs lightly at my cape, and I know what he refers to.
Did you ever consider the possibility of a life that was different from this, Bruce. Did you?
I contemplate, but the answer presents itself after a moment's thought.
"Yes," I reply.
"Yes."
"When I was six, I wanted to be a pilot."
And the little crooked plane sits forgotten somewhere, edges crumbling into musty yellow, a shade of the boy I once was.