…and the next thing he knows he's sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, his muscles tense and his heart running at a thousand kilometers an hour. The next thing he becomes aware of is the sheen of cold sweat on his skin, and then that there's daylight showing through the cracks in the blinds. His hands fly to his chest, over his heart where the knife was, and he looks down at himself with wide, anxious eyes. He finds, much to his relief, that he is undamaged.
It was a dream. Just a bad dream…Terry shuts his eyes, puts a hand to his forehead and sighs as he runs his fingers through his hair. He takes slow, deep breaths, trying to concentrate on getting oxygen in and out of his lungs to calm himself down. His heart rate slows back to something near normal.
Then he realizes that, in his nightmare, he didn't think to scream for help after he was stabbed. Screaming would have been a perfectly natural thing to do. Maybe he didn't because he's used to responding to cries for help instead of sending them out. He doesn't know, and he doesn't really want to think about it, so he doesn't wonder about it for very long.
Terry looks at the digital clock. It's 7:09, almost two hours before his alarm is set to go off – he's been getting up at 9 AM since the summer began. He thinks about going back to sleep until then, but he immediately dismisses the idea. There's no way he'll get back to sleep after that.
~***~
He goes through his morning preparations in a burned-out haze, feeling like his conscious mind and his body aren't properly connected to each other. Sometimes he feels that way when he wakes up after a night of very little sleep, but the feeling usually dissipates after about ten minutes of being up and about. Not so today. He looks at his face in the mirror after he's done getting dressed and sees a stranger looking back it him. With a sigh, he heads for the kitchen.
His mom is eating breakfast – her workday starts at eight-thirty. She looks up when she hears Terry come in. "Terry! You're up early…" Then she peers at him. "Is something wrong?"
For the past several years he has always responded to that question with a very vague answer or an outright lie. But after the whole Batman business, she's not going to be satisfied with that. "I had a weird dream," he explains.
She looks concerned. "Do you have nightmares a lot?" she asks seriously. He knows that if he answers in the affirmative, she will attribute those bad dreams to his job, which is easy to understand. This dream, however, wasn't exactly related to that.
"Yeah, but they aren't usually this bad," he says with perfect honesty.
For a few seconds she just looks at him, a wistful smile on her face. "You know, when you were little, you'd always want me to hug you after you had a nightmare," she remarks.
The hint is obvious and, truth be told, Terry's glad that she's giving him the excuse so he doesn't have to ask or go without this little bit of comfort. He smiles and walks over to his mother, who stands up and puts her arms around him. She pats him comfortingly on the back. Even though she's shorter than he is, it makes him feel like he's a little kid again. Usually that's not a good thing, but this is an exception.
After a few seconds they part, and she sits him down at the table. "Tell you what – I'll make you breakfast. You look like you need it. How long has it been since you've had scrambled eggs and French toast?"
Terry shrugs. "Well, the last time I remember, I think Matt was still in diapers." They both have a chuckle over that. Then Terry realizes something. "Won't you be late for work, though?"
His mother makes a dismissive gesture. "I haven't missed a day of work for the past year, and I've almost never been late. I'll just call and say that Matt's not feeling well." She grins. "You get out the breakfast things while I'm on the phone "Yes ma'am," Terry says as he gets up. He wonders why she's doing this – he's even a little suspicious – but then he feels foolish. After all, she's his mother. She'll probably tell him her reasons later.
His mom calls her place of business while he gets out the pans, bowls and other breakfast-making tools, as well as some eggs, butter, frozen bacon strips, bread and other relevant foodstuffs. By the time his mother's gotten off the vidphone he has all the stuff ready and the electric range warmed up. She comes in, washes her hands and starts getting to work, deftly spreading bread slices and bacon strips on one of the large pans.
"Need any help?" Terry asks.
"You can mix up the eggs," she informs him as she puts some butter on the bread and spreads it around with the spatula. "Half a dozen should be enough."
Terry nods and cracks a few eggs into a large bowl, then picks up a whisk and starts scrambling them. The smell of cooking takes him back to when he was about the same age that Matt is now, when his parents were together, and he almost expects his father to walk into the kitchen in his pajamas, bathrobe and slippers, with a yawn and a cheerful good morning.
"This brings back memories," he says, half-cheerfully and half-mournfully. His mother pauses for a moment in the process of flipping over one of the bread slices, then nods solemnly. She knows what he's thinking about.
For about a minute after that, neither one of them says anything. Terry starts cooking the scrambled eggs by himself – his cooking skills in general may be mediocre, but it's hard to mess up scrambled eggs unless you're the type who can also mess up on microwave meals or a bowl of cereal. Suddenly his mother decides to break the silence. "You know, since we talked a couple of days ago, I've been thinking…" Terry tenses up, but says nothing.
"At first I thought that, if this city needs a Batman, he shouldn't be my son. Then I remembered all the things Batman had done - you had done – since you started a year ago. There are probably a lot of other things I didn't hear about," she adds with a touch of humor as she slides the bacon strips onto a nearby plate, flips the bread slices and gets more bacon for frying. "If you're willing to do something so challenging, and you do it so well, then I don't think anything I say can make you give it up."
Terry doesn't like where this is going. "Mom…"
"Relax, I'm not trying to take you on a guilt trip," she assures him. "What bothers me is that I didn't figure it out sooner." She shoots a sidelong glance at the pan of scrambled eggs he's making. "You'd better take those off the stove, dear."
He's confused by the sudden change of subject. "What?" His eyes go to the pan. "Oh. Sorry." Terry slides the scrambled eggs on to a nearby plate and goes to the sink to wash the pan and spatula. "Don't be so hard on yourself, mom. After all, I was trying really hard to keep you from finding out about it."
His mother shakes her head and sighs. "No, that isn't it. I know parents aren't supposed to tell their kids about these kinds of things but…I think I should tell you." She pushes the last pieces of bacon and toast onto the plates beside the stove and goes to join him at the sink with her own cooking implements. "After your father died and you got the job with Mr. Wanye, you didn't seem to need my help, or even want it. I thought it would be best to just let you go your own way as long as you didn't do anything bad."
She doesn't say anything for a few seconds after that. Terry decides he has to prompt her. "But…?"
"Well, when I figured out that you were Batman, I felt…like I'd made the same mistake twice. Because after you were…" – she takes a barely noticeable fraction of a second to build up her courage – "arrested a few years ago, I felt like it was my fault for not paying enough attention to you."
"That wasn't anyone's fault but mine," Terry says quietly. He can understand why she feels that way, though – he'd started going with the gang, getting into trouble, during the last year of his parents' marriage. One couldn't help but think that his own downward spiral was related to what his parents were going through at the time, especially since he'd gotten busted less than a month after their divorce was finalized. But the mistakes that had landed him in juvie had been his own, not his parents'.
His mother shrugs as she starts drying the pans. "Maybe we're both responsible. That's not what matters right now, though." She takes him by the shoulders and turns him to face her, so that she can look him in the eye. "I just don't want us to get that far apart again. Once is too many times already, and it's happened twice." She looks down thoughtfully for a moment, then back up at him. "There are certain things I can't help you with, even if I want to. I know that. But everything I can do to help you, I will. Just tell me. I'll always be here for you."
Terry is alarmed to feel tears gathering in his eyes, and to find that he has nothing adequate to say. He's saved from both problems, though, by his little brother – of all people – whose door he hears squeaking open on the other side of the apartment. "Matt's up," he informs his mother. She turns around and goes to the kitchen doorway to meet her younger son, who sort of waddles in rubbing his eyes and yawning.
"Good morning, honey," his mother says as she bends over to plant a kiss on his cheek.
"I smelled breakfast," Matt says. His eyes catch the plates of food that Terry is setting out on the table, and his face lights up. "Oooh! You made French toast! I love French toast!" He throws his arms around his mother. "Thank you, Mom!"
She laughs and picks him up, even though he's almost too big for it. Terry expects Matt to ask why she cooked a big breakfast, when there's no obvious occasion for doing so, but after they all sit down at the table he realizes that his little brother isn't even wondering about it. He's too innocent to have a sense of suspicion about these things. As Terry watches him spear a whole piece of French toast on his fork and lift it to his mouth, he thinks to himself: Someday I'll have to tell him, too. But not today. He can preserve his little brother's ignorance, and by extension his innocence, for a while longer.
Matt notices how Terry is looking at him and he lifts his eyes from his plate. "What're you looking at me for?" he asks.
"You're eating bacon," Terry replies. "That's cannibalism."
"No it isn't!"
"Yes it is."
"But it's from a pig, and I'm not a pig!"
"Yes you are. You eat like one, anyway."
Matt sticks his tongue out and kicks Terry under the table.
"That's enough," his mother says, albeit good-naturedly. "I made a nice breakfast for you – the least you can do is behave while you eat it."
"Yes, mom," Matt says despondently. With the passing of a few seconds' time and a few more forkfuls of food, however, he forgets the whole incident and attacks his breakfast with a cheerful smile.
Terry's thankful that his brother doesn't know the secret. Matt is completely uninvolved in Batman's world, which makes him safer. And, a little selfishly, Terry is glad that this little bit of his life, at least, is still his own.