Nightwing: The Darkness

Chapter 7

DISCLAIMER: The characters and situations contained in this story are ©2004 by DC Comics Inc. and are used without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2004 by Christopher W. Blaine and may not be reproduced without permission.

Bruce Wayne did not look like a man who had been denied his liberty for over seven years. In fact, Nightwing noted as his father took a seat opposite of him, he could not remember ever seeing him so alive. He had taken to not shaving every day and his gray-streaked stubble gave him not the look of shagginess that was so popular with younger folks, but more of a wizened warrior face.

"You look well," Nightwing said. Bruce said nothing for a moment and the other man wondered if his father would send him away. It was no less than what he deserved and he mentally began to prepare himself for the rebuke he was sure he was going to receive. In the seven years since Superman apprehended the Batman, Nightwing had spoken to his mentor perhaps only three times.

Not at all in the past three years; not since Nightwing's relationship with the Huntress had ended. "Thank you," Bruce replied in an even voice. There was a slight smile to his face, but Nightwing could not tell if he was being sarcastic or if he was genuinely happy. Maybe the years away from the stinking streets of Gotham City had been good to him. "You look…tired," the older man said cautiously.

Nightwing nodded and then looked around the room. "Do they still bug these rooms?" he asked. If they were going to discuss official Justice League business, then he did not want civilians to overhear. It was not so much for the protection of the League, but for the citizen. If one of the League's enemies were to suspect that someone employed at Arkham had inside information on the world's foremost super-hero team, then that person's life would be in grave danger.

"Not when I'm in here," Bruce told him. Nightwing detected the subtle aristocratic tone that he had grown to know so well. Despite his championing the innocent and downtrodden, Bruce Wayne was still a somewhat snob at heart. You did not possess billions of dollars and not develop a taste for the better things in life and as such, you came to see yourself in a different light.

That was why, as a younger man, Nightwing had chosen not to use much of his inheritance and even now spent very little of the Wayne fortune. He had absolute control over it until Bruce was released from the Asylum, which if everything went right would be in another eight years.  "I guess the Batman has some pull here," Nightwing observed.

"The Batman is dead," Bruce reminded him before sitting back. "I've accepted it, so should you."

There was no malice in his tone; it was as if he were describing the weather. Nightwing did not understand how you could put such a huge portion of your life behind you that simply. "I didn't come here to discuss our relationship…"

"Good; it should be a pleasant conversation then," Bruce said.

Nightwing paused and took in a deep breath, wishing he had a drink to steady his nerves. Even after all he had been through, his was still the teenage boy who was intimidated by the Batman. How did they end up so far apart? What was the catalyst for the change?

For a brief moment, Nightwing recalled his earlier life as Robin, the Teen Wonder. He had lived for the Batman's approval and though he never gave it verbally, somehow he always knew that Caped Crusader was proud of him. Or was he only fooling himself?

Decades before a super-villain named Bane had broken Batman's back and Bruce had turned the cape and cowl over to a complete stranger, Jean-Paul Valley. Nightwing had been hurt, deeply hurt, so much that even after Jean-Paul was forced to give up the Batman identity and Bruce gave it to Nightwing briefly, he had never really gotten any closure.

They had discussed it; fought and cried over the entire incident and Bruce had gone so far as to admit he was wrong to have bypassed Nightwing; but none of that had ever helped. It was a shun that had haunted the younger man, left him with a feeling in inadequacy that could never be overcome. Had that defined his life, or was it simply an ingredient on the recipe card of his downfall?

"You've heard about the recent hero killings?" Nightwing asked. Bruce nodded and said that he was especially saddened at the loss of Arsenal and the new Robin. "You should have taken her under your wing," he said in retrospect.

Nightwing gritted his teeth. "I never asked her to be a hero. I didn't take on any partners for a reason."

Bruce shrugged. "I suppose you're right…go on."

"It was Obsidian," he announced in a low voice. "He's back and we need to know exactly how you beat him last time." Nightwing leaned forward. "You were running the League, but you were alone in the final confrontation with him."

Bruce nodded and leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It seems like a lifetime ago, but I guess it was." He chuckled. "I thought I had all of the answers; God, what a fool I was."

Nightwing shook his head. "No, God damn it!" he exclaimed, slamming a fist on the table. Bruce did not even twitch. "You are not going to take control of this conversation like you have everything else. Answer the question!"

Bruce opened one eye and gave Nightwing a long hard stare. The hero did not flinch. "I don't control everything, because if I had I wouldn't be in here now."

"That's a load of crap! You made the decision to take the blame for my crime, to put yourself up on a cross!" Nightwing struggled to keep his eyes from watering. "I have spent years trying to make up to you what I did! I have done everything you asked…"

"Except the most important thing…"

"He deserved to die!" Nightwing stood up and his chair flew back. Oddly enough, no orderlies came rushing in, but then he would later decide it would have done no good. Two of the world's best martial artists were having an argument; it was better to stay away. "Why can't you get that through your head? Why do you and I have to suffer because that scum is no longer here?"

"Did you ever listen to anything I ever told you?" Bruce asked as he lowered his hand. His gaze was hard and so was the set of his jaw. There was no longer any mirth and Nightwing finally stood face to face with the Batman he had feared for years. "I spent years training you to do the right thing, to bring justice to a world full of injustice."

"The injustice was letting someone like the Joker live for so long! My God, Bruce, are you really that stupid?"

"Stupid?" Bruce asked, one eyebrow cocked. "Because I valued the law? You murdered a man without the benefit of trial. You did the exact same thing that he did time after time. You became the Joker in that instant, Dick."

"Get off your high horse, Bruce…"

Bruce laughed. "You know its true. Why do you think I'm here, Dick? Because I want to punish myself for being a bad father? Yes, I probably do deserve some punishment. Hell, I'm probably ready to be crowned the winner of the Oliver Queen memorial Stupid Damn Father award." He turned away for a moment. "I tried my best but damn it, I never had a father to teach me what to do."

When his head came back around, his eyes were full of tears. Years of pain came pouring out, droplet after droplet. Yet through it all, his voice did not waver. "We did what did to protect innocent people, so they wouldn't have to go through the pain we went through. We helped the law. Maybe we bent it, but it was always in the pursuit of justice. Don't blame me if you over-reacted."

Nightwing moved quickly, up and over the table, his fist catching Bruce square in the jaw. The older man fell back with a crash but again no orderlies came bursting in to his rescue. Nightwing grabbed him by the front of his white shirt and hauled him up. "Don't you drag me into this. I know what I did; I set the record straight. How many lives were ended because you wouldn't do what needed to be done? Jason. Barbara. Sarah. Jim. The list goes on and on, Bruce. Sometimes society has to make tough choices."

Bruce spit out some blood and sneered. "Society made a choice; they put the Joker in Arkham, where he belonged. You decided that wasn't good enough. You usurped the will of the people you were sworn to protect!"

Nightwing roared and head butted his mentor and there was a squishy sound as Bruce's nose exploded into a shower of red. "None of that gives you the right to come here and take my punishment!"

"I'm in here because I need to be," Bruce said. "If I hadn't done something drastic, you would have gone completely over the edge. I know; I skirted that cliffside more times than you can imagine!"

Nightwing let him go and stood up. "Its my crime! Mine!" He turned away and leaned against a wall. "I never meant for this to happen to you."

Bruce slowly got himself back up and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. Though he could not see into his son's face, by his posture and tone, it was apparent that something more was wrong then he was letting on. Should he explain further his motivations for taking the blame for the crime? Would that make his son feel any better?

When Nightwing had killed the Joker, the Batman had not been entirely shocked. Many, many times he had to steel himself from doing the exact same thing. Who hadn't wanted the psychopath dead? He murdered hundreds of innocent people and ruined more lives than could be counted. Yet every time he was captured, the Batman had handed him over to police like a birthday present, wrapped up tight sans the pretty bow.

And why? For piece of mind or was it for something else, something that the Batman had always sought to avoid? If he had not turned himself in, if he had not shocked his son back to reality, then the Batman had been fearful that an old prophecy would have to be fulfilled.

When the Joker had shot and raped Barbara Gordon, he had also kidnapped her father, submitting him to humiliation and mental torture beyond imagination. When the Batman finally caught up to the Joker, they had a conversation in which they agreed that of they continued on their respective paths, one of them would surely kill the other. That was the effect of the Joker's madness; he made you become that which you never wanted to be. He saw Batman's ordered life as a threat, something to tear down and he spent all of his time trying to achieve that goal.

Would the Clown Prince of Crime be satisfied in knowing that he had succeeded? Would he have giggled with maniacal glee at the meltdown that the family of the Bat was subjected to in the wake of his murder?

Would it bring him pleasure to realize that Batman had himself locked up to keep him from killing his son?

When he had initially confronted Nightwing about the Joker's murder, the younger hero had been proud of what he had done and in his face Batman saw something he had never seen before. The stress of having lost so many in his life, combined with the horrors that a career of dispelling darkness had changed the happy-go-lucky acrobat into a cynical, spiteful man. If Nightwing had not been stopped, Batman feared he would find some sort of justification for further killings. Nightwing would, in essence, become the Joker in purpose and Batman would have to stop him.

But Batman had trained him and he knew, short of death, once Nightwing completely stepped over the edge, there would be no way of taking him alive.

The idea behind punishment (at least it used to be) was rehabilitation. Nightwing was not a common criminal, he was a special case and that required special means of punishment. The Batman had selected guilt instead of incarceration. No justice would be served if Nightwing had stood trial.

Even if he had been convicted of the crime, the chance of Nightwing spending the rest of his life in jail for murdering the Joker was slim. In fact, Bruce Wayne had reached a plea agreement in order to prevent an acquittal in a jury trial. Nightwing needed to face the true nature of his crime and he could only do that alone, or so the Batman had thought.

Now he was starting to wonder about the extent of the damage that may have been done to Nightwing on that night. Had he wrongly believed that Dick Grayson could hold up under the extreme pressure that the life of a Dark Knight entailed? He was still proud of his killing of the Joker, or was at least trying to justify it.

He hadn't moved beyond that night yet and Bruce swallowed hard. Again he had failed as a father and he cursed himself a thousand times. Alfred had tried to tell him so many times that a hug and kind word did more than stern discipline in many cases. "I know you never meant to hurt me, that you never meant to disappoint me," Bruce offered. "But what you did was wrong, Dick."

Nightwing did not answer immediately, but stayed turned around. When he did speak, it was barely audible. "You don't understand. I don't want your forgiveness, Bruce. What you did, taking the rap for me, was noble, but stupid. You fixed the evidence so that if they had filmed me killing the Joker you would still be the one to hang."

He turned back around, he eyes glistening with moisture. "I know what you were…are trying to do. Get me back to doing the right thing. Pay society back with my blood, sweat and maybe even that little piece of my soul that I tore out that night. I hate that you are in here…I wish it was me…"

"I know, but we both know a price has to be paid," Bruce offered. He spread his hands out. "I'm no better. I should have seen it coming, should have prepared you better. It's called vicarious liability. I'm responsible for the actions of those under me."

"Yeah, but it didn't help, Bruce," Nightwing said, but he offered no more. Bruce saw a defeated man, a man without hope and he knew that the killing of the Joker was not the exact core issue here. Something else was eating at him. There was some issue that he could not come to terms with and it was rotting away his core being. "Can we get back to Obsidian? I've already lost Roy; I don't want to lose anyone else."

Bruce nodded, though the action hurt slightly and the two of them returned to their seats as if nothing had happened. "I was leading a Justice League task force after him, " Bruce began. "Me, Dinah, Helena, J'onn and Diana. He had already murdered his father and we were fearful he was going to go after his sister. Clark took hi won team to protect her while I tried to figure out where he would hide."

Nightwing searched his memory, trying to get past the red buzz that was only dulled by alcohol. "The old Justice League headquarters in Happy Harbor, right?"

"Yes, he had taken up refuge there…was keeping the bodies of some of his victims there as trophies. Todd's problem was that he, deep down, resented his father for what he felt was his abandonment of him and his sister," Bruce explained. "That hatred and the feelings of hurt grew over the years until it became a murderous rage. Of course, it was ridiculous: Alan Scott hadn't even known the children existed until they were adults. Their mother had hidden them away from him."

"Todd also resented the fact that his sister was much closer to their real father than he was," Nightwing added. "So he became obsessed with destroying his father's legacy…"

"And as a founding member of the Justice Society, one could argue that his legacy is the multitude of heroes and super-hero teams we have now," Bruce finished. His eyes narrowed. "He's taking out the teams one by one, working his way up the ladder. First the Titans and then the Outsiders. I would say the All-Stars or the Suicide Squad is next since they have more experienced members."

"The League and the Justice Society will be last on his list," Nightwing agreed. "How did you beat him?"

"I thought he killed himself, though that was never my intent," Bruce replied, noting a slight shift in Nightwing's posture. That, he decided, would bear further investigation. "I got him to face his fears, challenged him to look inside his own soul. With J'onn's help, I managed to do that by establishing a mental link with him. I let him see how the world perceived him and asked if that had been his intent all along. Did his vengeance really make things better."

Bruce leaned back. "Then his own darkness consumed him and he was gone."

Nightwing said nothing for several minutes, his mind putting up barrier after barrier to prevent him from taking in fully the implications of the fate of Obsidian. "Obviously, he got over his feelings," Nightwing finally said.

"Dick, is everything alright?" Bruce asked.

Nightwing stood up. "No, Bruce, everything is not alright. I've got a super-powered serial killer running around the planet targeting my friends. My father is sitting in prison…in an insane asylum…for a crime I committed because he wants to guilt-trip me back onto the straight and narrow. The League is falling apart around me because everyone thinks I'm some sort of coward for not taking you in myself. My girlfriend, who is married to a friend of mine, is pregnant and the simple fact is I'm not in love with her."

Bruce's eyebrows raised in surprise. "You got Ollie's daughter pregnant?"

Nightwing could not help but grin. "I don't even want to know how you found out she and I are having an affair."

Bruce waved it off. "J'onn told me; he caught the two of you in a compromising position. It's the reason he left he League; he did not want to be in the middle of a domestic squabble that could put the League in danger."

"Does J'onn know?" Nightwing asked, indicating the truth about the Joker.

Bruce shook his head. "Not as far as I know of, but he's at a loss to understand why you would interfere in a marriage, especially that of a friend, of someone who looks up to you. Martians take life commitments like marriage very seriously. You offended him."

"Great, someone else to hate me…"

"He doesn't hate you, but he is, like I am, concerned. Maybe you need to just step away from it all, Dick. Maybe we were both wrong…"

"Too late for regrets, Bruce," Nightwing said as he moved towards the door. He pressed a button to summon the guard. "I'm sorry I haven't been by to visit more, but I probably won't be making a habit out of it either."

"You need to talk to someone."

"I tried. He doesn't want to listen." Bruce tried to get more information about whom it was that Nightwing had tried to confide in, but the door opened and the hero stepped out into the hallway and quickly put distance between the two of them once again.