Chapter 4: "Family Ties"

Chapter 4: "Family Ties"

Dick waited there for the figure to move, but she didn't make any motion at all. "Well…," he said to her impatiently. "Aren't you going to do something? Aren't you going to find a door and walk through it and take me into the next life scenario?"

"We're here already," she said, walking away from him.

He almost laughed as he followed her. "What? Don't we have to go pay a visit to Bruce in the Cave first?"

The figure simply walked more, stopping in front of a large vault. "Here you go…" she offered him. Seeing the expression on his face, she added, "Or do you want to stop this now?"

"No," he spat at her. "I can handle this." He walked through the entrance and went to the newest looking stone coffin, looking at the inscription.

Bruce Wayne

1950 – 1990

Rest Now

"How did he die?" Dick asked softly.

"He died as Batman. Alfred left him even sooner in this world, because he became driven with his work even faster. He had nothing to hold him down to the real world at all. Not you… not Barbara… and eventually, not even Alfred. He started becoming careless, almost as if he had a wish, deep down within… a secret desire for one of the criminals he fought to kill him. And one of them did."

Dick looked at her. "Joker?"

She shook her head. "No. Just a common, run of the mill criminal. No one extraordinary. Come," she said, walking out of the vault.

Dick followed her back to the trees. "Well," he asked. "What do I see next? Where to?"

"Right back here," she said, motioning to the same tombstone he had cried at before.

"Not again," he muttered as he bent down to see the grave.

Barbara Gordon

1970 – 1994

In Loving Memory

Of What Might

Have Been

"'Gordon,'" he repeated, reading the inscription. "The Joker again?" he asked.

"No," she said, knealing down next to him. "The Joker never got a chance at her in this world."

"Then what happened?" he asked, trying to mask his pain.

The figure stood up and started walking across the graveyard as she told the story. "Barbara Gordon grew up happy and normal. She went to Gotham City University where, like in your world, she met Jason Bard. They fell in love and were engaged to be married. Unfortunately, Barbara was in the wrong place at the wrong time." The figure entered the funeral home door and now they were walking along the corriders of Blackgate Prison. "She was in the supermarket one night, buying last ingredients for a dinner she was making for Jason, when a young man entered the store. This young man was very troubled. He was bullied by almost every set of foster parents he had been through and had run away on the rest of them. And he blamed Barbara's father for this. So, when he entered the supermarket, originally intending on robbing it, and saw her instead, the young man got his revenge for his rotten childhood. This you man…" she said, stopping at a cell, "is you."

Dick looked into the cell and saw himself sitting there on the bed. The face, albeit scarred, was unmistakeable. "I…. I killed Barbara?" he asked, choking the words.

The figure nodded.

"How? How did I become that?" he asked in anguish.

"Bruce didn't take you in as his ward, so Commissioner Gordon, having no other option, turned you over to the state after your parents' death. You were bounced in and out of foster home after foster home. Most of your foster fathers beat you. You ended up running away and living on the streets, but you always remembered that it was Commissioner James Gordon who was the reason he was beaten all throughout your childhood. You never lived the easy life, never went to society balls, never met and fell in love with Barbara… but you knew that she was the Commissioner's daughter. And you shot her. Now you sit on death row for it." The figure walked past him, heading out of the prison block. "Time to go back."

"No." he protested, standing still. "There's one you haven't shown me yet."

She turned to him. "What's that?"

He turned to her. "Show me what life would have been like if I had never been born."

She exhaled and shook her head. "I can only show you the consequences of your choices. Being born was not your choice."

He walked over to her and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly. "You can show me… I know you can. Barbara made me watch It's A Wonderful Life twenty times and I know you can show me that."

She pushed him off of her and threw him down on the ground. "Fine!" she spat. "If you think that will make everything better, I'll show you that. But remember, you're the one that wished for it."