[Save]
My vision swam and sweat rolled down my face. It dipped onto the stone floor beneath me. I woke up with a massive headache. Taking deep breaths I tried to centre myself. Where was I? What had happened to me?
Standing up was a chore but I managed it. My legs were shaking so I only managed a few steps before I fell down to the cold floor. I felt like vomiting and shaking but I couldn't move.
Through my blurry eyes, I looked up when and saw something that looked like a leg. I followed the leg up to see a face that bought back memories from my last outing.
"Butler Man?"
"Miss Hebert. You are awake. Please lie down, you look terrible."
The words felt like they were drilling holes into me. I clutched my head.
"Please, Miss Hebert, We think the medicine had an adverse effect on you. Didn't penny ask you if you were a Human? Do you think you might not be fully one?"
Human? What?
"I—am human." I managed to say.
He shakes his head.
"Yes, you are. But we did some tests on your blood and you aren't fully one. There is some—force within you that's changing your physiology. You are human in the sense that you are of the human species but it has diverged. Some bad reactions to the antiseptic we used. Why I am explaining this to you when you are on the floor? Wait here let me get a towel."
Oh, that—kinda makes sense. I do have skills changing me. But would normal antiseptic have this bad of an effect on me? I saw that Alfred had come back with a towel. He walks in and wipes my face.
"You are burning. Here, let me get you to the bed" I let him carry me.
"But hey, we also found out that your body is fighting it and you should be better in a few hours. So that's good is it not?"
I nod my head.
"We should have had tests done before giving you that. I deeply apologize." He said as he lay me on the bed I woke up in. I was already feeling slightly better. The world wasn't moving as much as I thought it was.
"No that's fine. I said I was fully human." I said. Liking how I could speak more than three words.
He walks back out of the room.
"Well is there anything I can do to make you feel better miss Hebert?" he asked.
I thought about it as I lay on the bed.
"Yeah, I have some questions," I said.
"Go on." Urged the butler.
"First of all, what's your name?"
He lets out a snort "Me? I never introduced myself. What have I become?" He asks himself. "My name is Alfred Pennyworth. Butler for Bruce Wayne and the father of my daughter, Julia Pennyworth. I believe you are cognizant enough to put faces to those names?"
I nodded from my bed, feeling silly.
"Ok. And where's Bruce?"
His face darkens at the question. His voice grows wearier as he responds.
"What happened? Did the Joker guy get him?"
"Master Bruce. I am afraid he the 'Joker Guy' did get him."
My heart thunders rushing blood to my head.
What? Why is he so calm?
"Is he dead? What happened?" I ask at the highest volume I physically could.
"No. never, absolutely not." Said the Butler, energetically. Like the whole concept of Bruce dying was unthinkable. "Master Bruce isn't dead." and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had only known him for a few hours but he was a pretty decent hero. He was no Armsmaster, but still pretty cool.
"He was paralyzed by the Joker's toxins. The Joker was expecting him to go to the ruins of the Asylum. He had a trap planned, he paralysed Master bruce and left him there. Julia has gone out to bring him back."
"That—that's good."
My eyesight had cleared enough to see that there was a TV in my room. It was showing scenes from a helicopter of the remnants of the fight between Batman and his friends.
I couldn't put it off any longer. I had done everything I could to not think about it but I had to face it. I had Alfred right here, nothing that could come between us. So with great trepidation, I asked my question.
"Alfred. What happened to my mom?" I asked. "—and my dad and me." I added.
I closed my eyes too afraid to hear his answer.
"You are asking a very strange question, Miss Hebert. You know that." Said, Alfred.
"Yeah, I know. I don't see the point of keeping it a secret. I am from a different dimension. I travelled here for a reason. It's—it's nothing important. Just a stupid mission that won't affect anything. I didn't think there would be a version of me living—or had lived here. I just want to know what happened."
"A dimensional traveller? And here I had a bet with my daughter that you were a time traveller." He chuckles, "It's an exciting world we live in." said Alfred.
Ok, this was the fourth or fifth time someone had bought up some nonsense about this world I had to ask him.
"You have time travellers and dimension travellers, How does that—" I stop myself. "You are trying to distract me," I said as my voice grew cold. There had been a sense of unease I had been ignoring since I woke up. What if he was trying to make me ignore how my family died? What if he was part of it? What if—
"An Accident. They were killed in a car accident. I had been trying to keep it from you, hoping you didn't have to hear it when you were already feeling so terrible." He said reluctantly. Each word drilling a hole through my chest.
Tears almost rolled down my eyes. I somehow kept them in.
A car accident. We died in a car accident. This time all of us died. Was that fate? I wanted to ask who was driving the car. I wanted to get answers on how and when. I wanted to know so much more. But I couldn't.
"A car accident? Why?" I couldn't help but say. A wound that had never truly scabbed over opened again. I thought I had moved on, but hearing it was the same here.
"I am sorry, you had to learn of it now and like this miss Hebert. I didn't know either, I only learned today after we looked into that cafe."
He said his words washing over me. He let me cry some more as he spoke about our meeting.
"I wasn't truly thinking when pulling the gun at you. That cafe was my refuge during those years when Master Bruce was gone and the mansion was cold and empty. I could rarely visit after Master Bruce returned and Batman began. It all got even more hectic when the family grew, so much so that I had to stop going altogether. I have a bit more time on my hands these days due to my daughter. Even then, only a coincidence due to one of us working near there took me to the Cafe."
"Learning that not only was Annette and her entire family dead, that I never heard of it, and that an imposter was standing in front of me, I did something I have since come to regret."
He sighed and then he continued talking.
"I have accumulated too much unhealthy paranoia from working as Master Bruce's attendant for these past few years. When I saw that image and then saw your face—I have nothing to rationalize it with, I pulled out a gun on a child. I—I've just decided that once this disaster is over, I am retiring." He fell sielent then, "It seems as if I've made it all about me. Retirement will do me good even if I do not know where I would go. My daughter is back and she can help Bruce from now on."
I was listening to what he had to say. I didn't know what to think about any of it. We sat in silence for a bit more time. Soon the sound of a car pulling up was heard, then he stood up and spoke.
"There are tissues near your bed, miss Hebert. Please use those. I heard master Bruce is here, I am going to check up on him to administer an anti-paralytic."
I nodded as he left to meet Bruce. I silently mourned for a family I could have never known.
—
It didn't take Alfred long to come back.
"Master Bruce came got the anti-paralytic and left." Said, Alfred.
"I could have gone with him. You know it wouldn't have happened if I had gone with him, right? It's the stupid medicine that caused this, I could have helped without patching up the wounds." I said. I was still sad, but my sadness was more distant. It went into a box somewhere where I kept it all locked up. Not because it would detract from me helping out Bruce, not because it would make me a better hero but because I couldn't function without that box.
He lets out a hum. "Let's ignore that you had two freshly broken bones, which you still do. You were bruised all over due to the flash dragging you as he ran. Let's also ignore that you currently cannot even stand up—"
"But I—"
"Young lady, let the old man finish." That stung, so he continued. "Two of your ribs were sprained, it looks like it had been from the last two days. And done nothing about. Your eardrums are in terrible shape and none of that is the reason you will not go 'help Bruce'."
My ribs were sprained? Is that why I was feeling so much pain? I thought it was something related to the varied and often non-sensical 'hallucinations of distress', as the doctor put it, I had been feeling since the—since the locker
It often manifested with me occasionally throwing up and feeling phantom cold and sliminess, but it was nothing hard to manage. I had told dad that I didn't feel it anymore. And if he is right about the sprains then I think I haven't since I got my power. I didn't connect the rib pain to anything, didn't think it was due to Victor's invincible punches. Feeling leftover phantom pain from every time I died certainly didn't help.
I was curious to hear what was worse than any of the reasons he bought up so I prompted him for an answer.
"I get it. I am reckless, but what's the reason that trumps it all?" I asked the butler.
"Wose that all of what I bought up? Taylor before I answer it, can you tell me why you have all those bruises? Why it was untreated, not even a bandage when your costume already included it in nonsensical places?" He asks me. He speaks like someone who had seen it all. Like someone who knew the answer, I was going to give.
The only reason I answered was because I hated that look. Because I wanted to surprise him, tell him that he didn't know anything about me. To stop him from drawing parallels to whatever he was drawing parallels to. I wanted him to know my life was nothing like what he knew.
"Because I went out and fought Nazis. I was out to save my city. I wanted to take down those degenerate, hypocritical, smug assholes." And with each word I spoke his eyes only grew cloudier. Again, as if he understood. I hated it.
"What are you looking at me like that for? I took down three capes. The first day, I did it. Taylor Hebert did it. Agent Fox did it. Sure I wasn't able to take them all down at once. But I had power and I helped people with it. Wrote the beginning of my legacy. I wasn't useless like I was in front of that fucking fox. I took them down."
I was sitting up on the bed by now. He continued looking at me like I was a reflection of something he feared and knew too well. There was intense heartbreak in his voice as he replied.
"And after you did all of that. After you achieved your goal, made your city a slightly better place. Who did you share it with? Did someone patch your wounds? Did you share your story with someone? Does Taylor Hebert have someone who would notice when she is nursing a rib injury?"
I couldn't answer him. Didn't have to we both knew it. So he continued.
"Bruce always did. From day one he had me. He was never exactly like you. He was older when he started but he could tell when he had a bruised rib. I would be here, listening to his stories, patching his wounds, fetching him medicine and supporting him. And now he has my daughter." He smiled slightly and leaned back into his chair.
"Then came Dick. Bruce's adopted son. Even he wasn't entirely like you. He was talkative, cocky, easily bored, and very hot-tempered. But no he is not who you remind me of." He leaned forward in his chair. The man who had sneaked up on me and had me at gunpoint grew weaker and older in front of my eyes as he remembered.
Was he telling me the names because it would be easy to find out their identities?
"Bruce adopted another kid. Jason. He was bright and brave just like what I saw of you. But he had difficulty with his temper, had no self-control and was reckless. You are fine at controlling your temper, but not the rest. The recklessness and lack of self-control remind me of you. Do you know what happened to him?" He asks me. I think I did, I could tell from how his eyes dipped.
'He died?' I wanted to ask. 'I am not like him, I am not reckless', I wanted to say. But before I could open my mouth, I thought about what he said. I thought about going to fight Victor on my fifth repeat when I had no more lives to spend. I had spent my fourth-day learning and preparing and thought I could take him on. Just as I thought I could take him on my third repeat and died.
"The Joker tortured him and killed him. He died in bruce's arms." A long sigh. "I don't know you, Taylor. I might have seen your counterpart walk around the cafe when you were young, But when I look at you I can't help but see Jason. A Jason without anyone to support him, because even at his worst, I was here for him, Bruce was here for him."
"So all I have to say is for Annette's sake and for Jason's sake. Please take care of yourself. If there is anyone on that side of the dimensional barrier who cares for you, please don't let them wake up to you gone from their lives."
We sat in silence for a while. Me taking in everything he had said.
"What was the worst thing I did?" I asked him.
"Huh?" He asked as he was woken up from his reverie.
"You said the worst thing I did and the reason you won't let me go with Bruce was that I did something worse than gathering all those Injuries," I said.
Then something I didn't expect happens, he looked alarmed.
"You don't see it?" He asks now more alert and concerned.
"See what?" I asked with genuine confusion.
"You—You girl. Was it all subconscious? You were suicidally reckless and you can't see that?" He asked, baffled and sad. "Bruce saw it. I saw it. When I saw the footage of you jumping on superman you had the same look in your eyes that I've seen so many times before. One that screamed you didn't care if you died or not."
"Wait—jump on?—Suicide? What are you talking about?" Then I thought about how it would have looked to an onlooker who didn't know about my ability. That I could take risks because of my many lives. "Oh, that? Nah, I wasn't trying to kill myself. I had a plan."
"You jumped on top of a mind-controlled Superman. If his objective wasn't hurting Bruce, If he wasn't subconsciously fighting the mind control, then you wouldn't be standing here."
"You have it all wrong." I stood up and walked towards the butler. "This might sound crazy but see I have this power that let's—"
I run into a wall. An invisible wall. My thoughts halt.
"What is this?" I said as I inspected the wall.
"And here I was hoping you wouldn't—You are in a secure containment unit, Taylor." Said Julia who had walked up from behind Alfred.
"What? Let me out." I said hitting the invisible wall.
"You can't brute force the containment. It was created for metahuman containment, and you are not on the upper scale for metahuman strength, barely more than the average human. Less than Bruce even." Said the girl.
"Alfred? What is going on." I said maybe with a bit of venom.
"I am sorry Taylor this is the only option we had under these circumstances. At any other time, you would have been talking to Superman or a Therapist depending on how grave your situation was. But currently, we can't get you the help you need so we can't have you near any dangerous situations. We will get through this. Please stay with us for two days, till the joker is back in prison."
I couldn't believe it.
"So all that hear to heart? Because you thought that I was suicidal?"
"I would have talked to you even if you were not suicidal Taylor." Said, Alfred.
My brain rushed. The unease I was feeling coming to the forefront. Making connections, going over the conversation we just had, and re-evaluating.
"Did my family die in a car accident?" I asked him.
"I would never lie—" Started the old butler.
"No, No you would never lie. Neither would Bruce. Not after promising not to. But was that all? Did my family really only die in a car accident?" The way he had phrased the reason, the way he had been diverting my attention from giving me an answer was all coming back. I could tell from his face that I was right.
I take a deep breath. My wounds stung, just enough to keep me focused. I rushed through everything that happened, and more connections formed. "Was it really just an anti-septic? the question about me being a human or not, was it to calculate the dosage? The dosage needed to keep me down? Her running away after giving me the medicine. You knowing so much about my biology afterwards." I didn't think about the invasion of privacy when I thought they were checking to see if I was ok, but now it's all put in the wrong context.
"Taylor—"
But I don't let him finish.
"You knew. You knew that I knew about Bruce's identity. That's why you came to greet me. Was he talking to you some other way? The communicator? Was the only reason he talked out loud about what to do once we got here to put me at ease?"
But it didn't stop there. There were more things, odd details that I chalked up to my lack of knowledge about the world. I didn't know if they were desperate connections I was making or if they were all correct.
"Did he need the scroll to transport Superman? Someone who made such a high-tech suit to defeat superman would also have something to keep him captured, wouldn't he? He did for all of his other 'Friends'."
I was betrayed. So I continued. Making more observations, speculations and theories.
"Why were you, The Butler for a superhero near my cafe when I got here? Did you have any means to detect people like me if dimension travellers are a known quantity? Did you even know her? Or was that all a story? Why were you, a frail old man who knows about the dangers of this world, pointing a gun at me, a dimension hopper?"
I ended my tirade with a scream. I wanted to hit something so I punched the force wall. It didn't even hurt.
"I didn't know any of that." He started to speak again. But I didn't want to hear any of his lies.
"You know what? I am out. Sa-yo-na-ra. I have a mission and that's all I have to stick to. Tell Bruce to fuck himself."
I pressed on the mental trigger to leave, to teleport to the beacon I had left outside expecting to jump and—nothing happens.
No something did happen. The room I was in spoke.
"Magical Activity Detected. Suppression field in effect."
I checked the seals in my jacket that was sitting nearby they were all just paper. Even the ones I thought I was being clever by hiding.
I sat down. It was all planned. They knew all of it. I was betrayed.
"Taylor, this is for your own good. We don't want you to make a rash decision and not even be there to even regret it. Only if you came when we could give appropriate help or if you woke up after this disaster. I am afraid you will hate us forever."
I didn't reply I just sat. It was all just—too much. I couldn't take it.
—
I sat in my cell, and don't get me wrong it was a cell, no matter how they dressed it up looking at the TV.
I listened to Penny outside as she coordinated the rescue of someone called Gordon whom the Joker had cornered.
The Joker, who I thought was a master was either a tinker or was working with one who had released a virus. A virus that would turn people into 'Jokers'. It was the same virus that had affected those superheroes. Because if the Joker had access to a mind control virus he would of course spread it as wide as he could.
The more I learned about the Joker, the more he sounded like Jack Slash if he was obsessed with a single city and a single cape.
I watched on TV and the many camera's they had around as hordes of infected went out to kill their loved ones or the ones that will cause the most distress to their loved ones. I saw it on the TV and my drug-addled mind catalogued as much data as I could.
It was a proto Zombie apocalypse. Where every infected person had an unnaturally stretched smile on their face. A good portion of Gotham had already been affected, the city was going to be walled and I was sitting in a cell. I hated it. I wanted to crush my Bracelets and reset, but I wanted to see how this played out first.
Speaking of my bracelets one of them was growing hot. I bought them out, I had learned after my first dungeon that I could hide them, and make them less noticeable by focusing but now I wanted to see them.
I bought them out and as I expected, the magic suppression didn't activate. Either because it was inherent to me like my slightly upgraded physiology or because it trumped the suppression field by metaphysical weight or something—I didn't know magic.
One of the bracelets was glowing. And I had a suspicion why. So, I spoke.
"Alfred, You have a camera pointed at the Cafe?"
Alfred hadn't left after my outburst, He was still sitting outside my cell. He had prepared tea and biscuits and passed some into my cell. He apologized for not being able to properly serve me but I had seen his true colours and knew it was all a facade.
Instead of answering he speaks to Penny who was coordinating with Batman, who was still unsuccessfully chasing leads for a cure and asks her to change my channel to a view of the Cafe.
It shows me the video of an unhealthy skinny 'Joker-Zombie' charging into my cafe, breaking tables and chairs. I wondered who he was hurting with that display. I wondered why there were biscuits and tea there when I woke up and why it was so clean. Something that actually happened or did my power do it?
The more he broke the cafe, the dimmer and dimmer the light from my bracelets got. As he set fire to the cafe, it went out entirely. Now it looked fragile, Like all it would take for me to reset was a single flick.
I marked everything about him in my memory. I will find him and I will have my answers.
At least I had one answer now. I knew what my mission was.
Save the Cafe.
I flicked.
AN:
