Robin watched his brother tear out of the cave like an angry dragon. Both Terry and Bruce had seemed to ignore him there at the end. Bruce still hadn't acknowledged him. The old man was sitting slumped in his chair, one hand rubbing circles into his eyes. For the moment at least, Robin was invisible. He could go after Terry. If he went now he could catch up with him. Maybe he could even convince Terry to stay if he was fast enough or clever enough. Even as he thought it, his heart sank. He would never be fast or clever enough for that.
Turning away from the stairs his eyes once more caught the flickering holo-table. The seven brains were still lit up in shades of red and yellow. If nothing else Terry was right about one thing. It was hard to believe. The menacing reality of what those colors meant was too abstract, too easy to laugh off. If he could let himself fully comprehend, it would be one of the most terrifying things he had ever faced, and he wasn't even the one whose head was being examined.
Robin looked over the holos again and realized the other implication of the images there. "He's not the only one, is he?" Matt's voice was quiet but clear, the question asked hesitantly.
Wayne's head came up sharply to capture the boy where he stood. His tense gaze took several minutes to soften. Robin found himself letting out a slow inaudible breath as Wayne turned to look at the holos.
"No, he isn't the only one." Bruce waved away Terry's scans bringing his own and Barbara's into center focus. They weren't dark in the same areas Terry's had been. Where Terry's brain had been damaged mostly on the left side, spreading forward, Barbara's scans showed damage deep in the center of her mind. Bruce's was again different, appearing as almost a stripe from left to right across his brain. Robin didn't know enough about psychology to know which areas those were, but he did know any damage could have disastrous results.
Wayne seemed to read his mind, reaching forward to let his fingers skim over the images of his brain. "The parietal lobe controls touch, pain, and the ability to detect heat."
Robin took in the information, almost automatically running through the scenario. He winced. Phantom sensations would be the least of Wayne's problems if the damage escalated. He wouldn't be able to tell if whet he felt was real or an illusion his mind created. The smallest injury could end up fatal because his pain sensors never picked up on it. He could be wracked with pain that had no source except his own head.
Wayne brought up his hand to the last holo: Barbara's. His gesture was so gentle, as if he thought he could hurt her through the image. His words were quiet and drifting. It was hard to tell if he was even aware he was still speaking.
"The brain stem, controlling heartbeat, breathing. Oh Barbara."
There was nothing Robin could truly say to that.
It should have been midnight, the sky clouded over and raining hard. Instead Terry found himself walking the city streets of a reasonably warm, partly cloudy day, on the university side of town. Plenty of people were out taking advantage of the start of the three day weekend. Restaurants brushed off outdoor tables that hadn't been used in a season while street vendors made a killing on hotdogs and burritos. Girls were already pulling out the shorts and mini-shirts. The whole world seemed ready to embrace summer, and Terry wanted none of it.
He had been walking around the city for almost an hour and still hadn't cooled down after his outburst with Wayne. Riding his cycle hadn't helped, being in the empty house hadn't helped, and now this jaunt had turned out useless. Fear tried to catch him again, and he struggled to push it back. Maybe it was just because he was aware of it now, but it seemed like his emotions seemed ready to jump him at any moment. It didn't help that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
He had never realized how much he relied on cold practicality. Silently adding up the odds while drinking in the thrill of a fight, or calculating someone's next move even as he was shooting off his mouth. Normally he could ride his emotions with logic as an anchor. Now he had been tossed into a maelstrom and was quickly losing himself.
"Terry, hello, Earth to Terry."
Terry had to check himself from grabbing the hand that was suddenly waving in front of his eyes. It would have been too easy to snap the wrist out of pure reflex. Then Max was suddenly up in his face and kicked all thoughts out of his head.
"Max,"
"You back planet-side then, or do I need to send you bus fare to get back from dreamland?" Max had one hand on her hip and was giving him a classic Max look: part mocking, part daring with a coating of amusement. Normally Terry could meet her gaze. It was part of the reason they were such good friends. Neither of them let the other get away with anything. Terry looked away.
Max noticed. "You OK Ter?"
"Fine. Anyway, who exactly is it that's always asking me for creds? If you want to start joking like that you better start paying me back." His smile would have fooled almost anyone but it didn't fool her.
"Don't try to change the subject on me."
"Who's changing the subject? You're the one who mentioned bus fare."
She snorted. Max was the only girl he knew who could actually pull off snorting and make it look feminine. "Spill, what's up."
"Nothing Max, drop it."
This was going too far. He didn't need her to get mixed up in all this slag. He was having a hard enough time dealing with it when it was only him... and Matt. Frag, he had forgotten about Matt. Where had she come from anyway? Max had popped up without him even realizing she was close. That wasn't like him. Street punk or Batman, he had always been able to tell when people were close - closing in on him. If that was gone as well as everything else... He didn't like where this was going. Maybe he had just been that distracted.
Max casually hooked her arm through his and started guiding him down the street. Terry pulled himself out of the internal debate to glare at her.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting a smoothie." Her response was the definition of casual.
"With my arm?"
"Oh no. Your arm is getting its own smoothie."
He tried to calculate the best way out of this particular trap, but got distracted when he realized where they were, and where they were going.
Mike's was a local secret. The cafe was tucked away behind a back street off university square. The original Mike had been one of the Blackhawks. He had lost a leg in combat and retired early, spending the rest of his life feeding and patching up any of his old friends who managed to make it through his door. Apparently it had happened a lot. It hadn't hurt that he had been more than a decent cook and had picked up recipes from everywhere he had traveled. The diner that had eventually emerged didn't look or feel like a diner. You had to eat wherever you could find a seat among the picnic tables and lawn furniture while food was served on cheep plastic plates out of the open kitchen door. You could by god write down your own order and if you didn't know the menu, too bad. The current Mike, grandson of the original, was just as good a cook and made smoothies you could eat with a spoon.
Due to the nature of the setting, Mike's had limited hours during the colder months. Terry had been busy enough that he hadn't been able to make it down there since last fall. He decided not to protest as Max grabbed a pair of order slips and started scribbling.
When the two of them were seated in a pair of wicker chairs in the shade of the building, Max turned to him and asked her question for a second time. "You ok Ter?"
She timed it for when he had just taken a bite. The hamburger that he had ordered was, in his opinion, a thing of beauty the likes of which were rarely found outside of Texas and therefore deserved his full attention. No snappy retort this time. The fact that he couldn't remember eating in the last 24 hours might have been a contributing factor. By the time he finished his bite he had actually started thinking about the question.
"No." He quickly took another bite to avoid the inevitable prodding from his female company.
"What's wrong?"
He glared, which she took as a signal to continue.
"You nearly grabbed me when all I did was say hello. You've been squinting at everything and rubbing the back of your neck. You've got that grumpy mad-at-the-world thing going, and the last time I saw that, you picked a fight with six Jokerz. There are bruises visible on half the skin you have showing. I can keep going, you know."
Well at least she didn't seem to expect him to talk about his feelings, just why he looked like a wreck. That might have just been a ruse though. Max could be tricky like that. He couldn't tell her anything anyway. Not without giving it all away. Could he? He did seem to remember something about Max knowing. Some comment from Matt maybe? It didn't matter. He had quit. He wasn't going back. He was done with it so there wasn't any point in talking about it.
"You know, you really suck at conversation, McGinnis."
"Maybe you just suck at starting conversations."
"Fine. You start." Max nibbled on her french fries as she waited for him to admit defeat.
Terry picked through his brain for a topic of conversation other than the one he was avoiding. There weren't that many to choose from.
"Is Dana still angry?"
"Depends, how much groveling have you done?"
Terry leaned back and rubbed at the back of his neck. He couldn't clearly remember the fight from the night before but he must have been injured at some point. The ache was distracting. "Not much. Haven't really had the time to talk."
"You never have the time to talk. I'm surprised she hasn't given up on you." Max took the lid off her cup so she could get at the last of her smoothie.
"I'm not that bad, and besides it wasn't my fault." Terry fiddled with the last of his fries.
Max rolled her eyes. "It was, and you are. What dragged you away this time anyway?"
"Jailbreak."
Terry looked up when Max didn't say anything. She genuinely looked surprised and more than a little incredulous. He blinked. "What? What did I say?" Her next look was of skepticism and surprise. She quickly covered her emotions.
"You just said that it was the jailbreak that tore you away from your last date with Dana."
"I did?" Thinking back, he could remember the first half of the date. He could remember getting the call that pulled him away. He could remember trying to explain and failing like so many times before. Then nothing. After that, the next thing he could remember was falling into bed and wondering if it was too late to call her and apologize. There was a big empty space in the middle. He had no memories of being anywhere near the jailbreak last week. Why had he said that? It sounded right, and considering what his job really was - had been - it made sense. Why say it out of the blue like that though? Had it been some kind of latent memory surfacing in an unguarded moment, or intuition stepping up where logic failed?
More importantly, there was the hard proof that he had been trying to ignore. Like it or not, someone had messed with his head. Terry sank a few inches lower in his seat.
"I've been listening to Dana complain about you ditching her for days now. You were on the opposite side of town when the jailbreak happened. I know you don't want to tell me what's going on," Max paused, giving him a look that clearly told him what she thought of that decision. "But you should seriously just tell me what's going on."
He couldn't meet her gaze.
"Terry, you can trust me. Whatever it is. You know I can keep a secret."
He did. He didn't know how he knew, intuition or repressed memory or what, but it was true. Maybe it would be better just to get it off his chest. It would give him a chance to complain about how crazy Wayne was if nothing else.
"It's going to sound crazy."
"Crazy is good. Crazy is interesting." She leaned forward propping her head on one hand.
Now what? Where was he even supposed to start? "You know Batman?" He felt silly talking about a hero who he hadn't known about until a few days ago.
She blinked a few times, uncomprehending. He waited for a spark of recognition, but it didn't come. OK that was strange. She should know that Batman existed at the very least. It had only taken about five seconds of digging for him to uncover a mountain of rumors about his supposed alter ego. Living in the hero's home town, there was no way she wouldn't know about him. Except, he hadn't know. His brain made another of those random connections.
"You've got your computer?"
"When do I not?" She pulled out her computer, balancing it on her knees.
"Do a search, 'Gotham superhero'."
When she hit enter the number of sites that came back was over ten thousand. Each of them expounded on the various rumors of the Dark Knight. Terry stole the last of her fries while she scanned page after page. After her initial shock she went into research mode, picking apart the patterns for the underlying facts. It didn't take her long to discover the basic history. He could see that she was dying to ask a million different questions. Before she could get the words out, he asked the important one.
"Why didn't you already know?" The theory building in the back of his mind made just a little too much sense.
"Start talking McGinnis." Suddenly, he had her undivided attention.
Terry stood, casually swinging his bag up over one shoulder. . He was in too deep now to back out. The real question was where to start. His story could sound like crazy fiction far too easily. He nodded in the general direction of his place.
"Walk with me."
Max dropped her plate in a plastic bin under a sign that said 'Please bus your own tables' and took a few extra steps to catch up to him.
"Where were you Tuesday morning?" His tone was casual enough but there was still the sense that it was an interrogation.
"Um…" She hesitated and her steps faltered. Max had to step into a quick jog when she realized she was falling behind again.
"What about Monday?" Terry slid another fact into place. "What made you miss school?"
This time when her steps slowed she didn't bother trying to catch up. After a few steps Terry paused as well turning back to look at her. The few blocks they had walked had taken them away from the University. There were fewer people on the streets, and most of those were quick paced rather than casual strollers. The sky was beginning to cloud over and the temperature dropped several degrees as the sun was obscured.
"I can't remember." Her voice wasn't overly quiet, but Terry probably wouldn't have heard it if he had been standing any farther away.
"Why?" she dropped the word between them letting it fall heavily to the pavement.
Terry shifted his hips, turning on his heels to face her. A part of him was feeling hopelessly lost. He should have been working through the logic, finding examples to support his new theory. Instead he had jumped to the conclusion that she was involved. There was no doubt, only stubborn insistence of a fact he couldn't prove. He knew it was the wrong way to go about this. Even so, it was his own mind, his own emotions. He had always trusted his instincts, trusted himself to see the important details. Stubborn anger pushed him to fight against this different version of himself. On the other hand, fighting himself, just for the sake of argument wasn't exactly going to be productive.
He took a pair of long steps forward. Letting his bag slide down his arm he reached into the side pocket, pulling out an object they were both familiar with. When Max had found the batarang stuck in the ceiling the other night he hadn't yet been clued in. Holding it now, he flipped the blades open with casual grace.
"This belongs to me." He paused, looking down at it. Was that really true now that he had walked out on Wayne, or did that even matter? "Batman uses them."
Max was getting over her shock. She looked at the red and black throwing star in Terry's hand. "That stuff on the web. Terry, you are not suggesting what I think you are. That would just be like, insane. Besides, you're the last person I would ever expect to…" she trailed off waving one hand in a fluttery gesture.
He hadn't yet met her eyes. Rolling one shoulder, he shifted his grip on the batarang . "You really think so?" With a twist, and a flick of his wrist the batarang curved through the air. It struck a wall nearly 50 feet away, embedded itself perfectly between three bricks. When Terry went to retrieve it he found the point buried half an inch into the mortar.
Max had followed him. She was looking at him now with wide eyes, her mouth twitching slightly as if she didn't know whether to start asking questions or get defensive. He pulled out the batarang , flipping it closed as easily as another person might handle a pocket knife. Palming it he rocked back on his heels, turning to casually survey the street.
"I've had a couple of crazy days, Max. I won't drag you into this if you don't want to be involved. It's probably safer in any case. If you do want in, it doesn't go further than the two of us. No matter what you think, no matter how crazy it sounds, you follow my lead and my rules." He had told her enough already that he knew he had her hooked. She wasn't the type to back out. Better to have these ground rules established at the beginning though.
She didn't work through the logic as quickly as he might have, but she knew him well enough to catch all the key points.
"McGinnis, if you keep dragging me around like this you will never have access to any of my notes again, no matter what classes you miss. Just spill already."
Terry took a breath and found himself rubbing at the back of his neck again. "We think it started on Tuesday, or Wayne thinks. Anyway, that's when things started feeling strange..." They walked, he talked, laying out the events of the last several days. It took a while. It seemed like more had happened in the last five days then in any six months out of the rest of his life. Of course, that was without the memories he was missing. When taken from that point of view who knows. This could be an average week.
Max mostly listened, occasionally she would step in to ask a question, but overall she seemed unsure of what to think. Her expression shifted between disbelief, skepticism, and a couple flavors of anxiety and fear.
When he finally brought the story up to the present, clouds had settled into a layer of overcast that was bringing on an early evening. They had wandered mostly aimlessly while walking, ending up near the small kid friendly park by his place. A group of kids around Matt's age were playing soccer on the field, but the play structure was empty. Terry let his hand trail over the chains of the swings, listening to the sounds of the links falling back into place.
Max let herself slump into one of the swings, and after a moment Terry slid into the one beside her. By this point, he was just waiting for her reaction. There was that possibility that she would throw her hands in the air, declare the whole situation crazy, leave, and hopefully pretend this conversation had never happened. If she was feeling particularly vindictive she could start telling everybody he was crazy. Not that he had much of a reputation to ruin but it certainly wouldn't make anything easier.
It took a few minutes but eventually she shook her head. "McGinnis, you really are an idiot. How could you possibly walk away from something like that?" Her eyes sparkled, as her words quickly picked up speed. "You're a superhero, and not one of those one-shot wonders who can only do one thing. You get to play with tech thats cutting edge, which is totally schway because then you don't have any weaknesses. This is big, I'm talking A-list here. From what was on the web, and what you said, the legacy for this has to be huge."
Terry shook his head. "This is me we're talking about. Huge, isn't a word I'd use to describe it."
"Oh come on, you had your memory erased. Hell, it's not even just you. They went after your friends. That's practically a prerequisite of being a hero. All you need now is time travel or another dimension or someone to come back from the dead to make the whole situation complete."
All things considered, he really should have expected that reaction. She didn't get it of course, how dangerous all this really was, or maybe she did. Max had never been one to run from danger. Neither had he, until now.
Of course he hadn't left because of the danger; he wasn't afraid of getting hurt. But when it came to his mind - his very self - that was a different matter.
"You've got to go back."
"No Max –"
"You can't let it end like this."
"I'm not –"
She leaned over sticking a finger in his face. "You're doing exactly what they want right now. If you let them win this, then the bad guys killed off one of Earth's major heroes. It doesn't matter if Terry McGinnis is still alive, because Batman will be 6 feet under."
"Oh please, this is a joke. Whoever heard of some kid with a juvie record becoming an A-list hero. You said it yourself, I don't have any powers. Take away all the fancy tech, and I'm no one. If Gotham needs Batman so much, Wayne can find someone else to wear the suit."
Max leaned back and sideways twisting the swing until she was facing him. "If just anyone could wear the suit then you wouldn't have gotten it in the first place."
Terry was suddenly standing. His feet grinding into the dirt as he put a few yards between them. He hated the insult, only it wasn't one. She was twisting everything around, pushing at him until he either gave in or blew up. At this point he didn't know which one would happen first. He wanted to scream at her. The only thing really holding him back was the fact that he knew this wasn't him.
"Why did you become Batman?" Her voice was so unconcerned, as if she was asking him to pass the salt. It was such a leading question too, but now that she had said it Terry couldn't help but wonder himself.
The memories were gone, but the emotions weren't, and neither were the facts. The timeline was simple to work out of course. Wayne was the center of it. Terry's whole life had changed back then, with his dad, the new job.
The fire slowly drained out of him, leaving his limbs weak and his body shivering. It had been for his dad. Somehow, that changed everything. The dark figure of Batman changed in his mind. It wasn't a demon waiting for the right moment to slip its chains. It was... not an angel, it was still too dark for that. It was a spirit. It was justice and vengeance tied together with the need to protect, holding onto the pieces that survived.
He really was an idiot.
"I'm not sure I can do this."
Max came over, resting a hand on his shoulder. "I am."
Hey everyone, I like how this chapter came out. It was one of those things that I didn't plan but just kind of appeared. Like Barbara Max wasn't supposed to be a big character.
Since I know some of you will be thinking it, no, I do not ship Terry-Max. I'm not against the idea but I don't plan on writing any of that in my stories.
What you will be seeing is who did it. Next chapter all will be revealed. Any more guesses about who it will be?
Thank you to Lenorathetrekkie, nequam-tenshi, Harm Marie, V, MirokuTK, and Sinister for reviewing.
Lastly if any of you are fans of the Flash or the JLA, specifically the Justice Lords parallel universe. I would point you toward Afterimage. It's going to be my next epic and I'm currently switching off updating that and this so you should all go take a look.
:)
