Reality swirled around Bruce Wayne. Many, many, many realities.
Bruce was on a rooftop, talking Jim Gordon out of murdering the Joker, he wasn't sure why but he just couldn't stop himself. Why on Earth would Bruce give a damn about saving that clown's neck? Everything just felt so strange, so warped.
Bruce didn't remember how they got up there but it was raining heavily and Jim looked half drowned by it. He looked so desperate, so angry, ranting and raving about something that happened to his daughter, Barbara.
Bruce pleaded, Jim faltered, Bruce tried to take the gun from him, Joker laughed, Jim's finger tightened around the trigger.
Bruce toppled off the roof, a high calibre bullet burning through his internal organs. As Bruce landed on the street below, almost crushing a homeless man, he took his last breath and reflected on how wrong this all was.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
On another world, Bruce was travelling through Europe with Selina Kyle. She knew he was planning to go back to Gotham after what the Joker had inflicted upon John Blake and all those orphans that lived in the Manor. She decided to leave Bruce before he left her. She called him an idiot as she left their hotel, her hands protectively around her baby bump. They had planned on calling their daughter Helena, Bruce wondered if she still would.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Barbara Gordon held little Tim Drake in her arms. Bruce could do nothing but stand away from her and blame himself. It was over. The Joker was dead, killed by his own prop gun. Little Tim wouldn't stop laughing. No more Robins, Bruce thought to himself, how dare he involve children in this.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Bruce finally found himself spat out of a blue portal, his head smashed against a street light, and he landed in a heap in the middle of a road. Thankfully he was still wearing his Batsuit, or at least some version of it.
Bruce had been flung from alternate Earth to alternate Earth, nonstop for the past few... days? weeks? it couldn't have been months but time was impossible to keep track of. He watched as different versions of himself went through their darkest moments. Some fatal, others heartbreaking. In either case, Bruce couldn't interfere, he was locked in their place, thinking their thoughts, saying their words. Trapped.
Bruce collected himself from the ground, slowly, and with every ache in his bones, he cursed the cosmic being that set him on this path, he called himself 'the Monitor' and at first he was someone who helped Bruce, saved his life, gave him purpose. The Monitor tasked him with assisting in the preservation of all reality. High stakes, no trust, and a broken world. At the end of Bruce's mission, the Monitor cast him aside, presumably Bruce had already become a loose end in the alien's schemes.
Bruce tried to shake off his disorientation and bad memories. He observed the street that he was on. It was night, quiet, familiar. Bruce was back in Gotham, he was sure of it, not far from Leslie Thompkins old clinic on Park Row.
Was it too much to ask that this was his Earth?
Bruce activated a communication link to the Cave beneath the Wayne Estate.
"Alfred, do you read me?"
Nothing but static greated Bruce, like the channel didn't even exist.
Bruce braced himself and pulled out his grappling gun, even without Leslie, the clinic should still be staffed with some version of the Wayne Medical team.
Bruce fired the grappling hook and was hurled painfully into the air. His body screamed in excruciating agony as all of his fatigued muscles protested against him.
Bruce landed less than gracefully on the roof of an old arcade. The far away skyscrapers of Gotham brightened his mood, at least until he noticed that Wayne Tower brandished red neon letters that proclaimed it 'Wayne Casino'
Bruce's heart fell at the evidence that there was little hope that this Earth could be his own. He was stranded in yet another possible reality.
A flicker of light caught Bruce's attention, it came from the direction of the clinic and quickly erupted into an inferno of flames.
Bruce was already making his way toward the fire, running rooftop to rooftop when the screaming started. It was horrific and made him furious that he couldn't get there faster.
Three figures fought their way out of the clinic. Lense scans confirmed that there were no other living occupants in the building. Bruce was nearly there, his mind already racing over the proper treatment to administer to fire survivors.
BANG
One of the three fell to the ground, lifeless.
BANG
Another cried out, the shot hitting their shoulder and knocking them over.
BANG
The pain of the shoulder wound didn't last very long.
Bruce dove off the roof, expanding the material in his cape to glide toward the third figure.
BANG
Bruce was too late, the man stumbled backward. Bruce caught him and put pressure on his wound, it was serious, he didn't have long left.
The man gazed up at Bruce with a look of unbridled horror before finally passing away. Bruce closed the man's eyes.
"Like shootin' fish in a barrel!" someone called out, cheerfully
Bruce reached for a batarang from his utility belt but curiously found himself empty.
"Well looky here, Question, seems like I got one of those copy cats" the same Southern drawl cried, it sounded maybe Georgian but with hints of something hiding behind it.
Bruce's eyes widened at the approaching gunmen: A man without a face, dressed in a pale blue trench coat, and his partner, a Batman, or at least someone dressed in a Batsuit. The Bat symbol on his chest was odd, a sharp pointed Bat rising against a blood red moon.
"I applaud you for the entrance, brother..." the Bat sauntered "But as you can see, the real deal beat you to the shot"
"Nice costume" The faceless man grunted, he looked like he was shaking. The Bat steadied him with a hand
Bruce tried to control his anger, it wasn't that long ago that he was a murderous Batman, roaming the streets, looking for someone to take his pain out on.
"Why?" Bruce asked "Why the clinic?"
The peculiar Batman spat on a corpse before giving Bruce a sick smile.
"You new around here? These scumbags have been infesting the place, whether they're dealers, thieves or just plain old murderers, Thompkins'll patch 'em up for nothin' "
"Everyone needs healthcare... you sound far too much like Dad"
The blood moon Bat paused before kicking the dead body beside him.
"Not everyone deserves it"
The Bat turned and made to take out his grappling hook from his belt but Bruce was faster, he grabbed the Georgian sounding imposter by the cape, yanking him back and then struck him hard in the face, knocking the man to the ground.
The faceless man drew a gun on Bruce.
"Huh and here I thought you were a fan" the Bat laughed through a bloody lip
"You're not fit to wear that symbol"
"So that's what this is all about... You want to take over... You want to become the Batman"
"I'm the only Bat here that Thomas Wayne would be afraid of"
Silence filled the street. The weight of the words left hanging between the three.
"...What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Maybe his other self was just trying to cling onto his secrets but something in his tone convinced Bruce otherwise. Maybe this Bat had a different kind of Thomas Wayne as a father, one that didn't inspire him to become something terrifying.
The blood moon Bat scrambled to his feet, he charged at Bruce, his form was sloppy, almost untrained. Bruce easily dodged punch after punch.
With one swift knee to the ribs, Bruce sent the false Bat reeling. The faceless man lunged at Bruce, catching him off guard and forcing him to the ground.
"HOW!?" The man only yelled one word before Bruce landed two feet to his chest, knocking the man off of him
The blood moon Bat took a knife from his belt, the blade was jagged and rusted. This bastard was even crueler to his victims than Bruce had thought.
It was harder for Bruce to dodge the blade, his opponent was vastly more skilled with it, he became cold and calm, almost eerily so after the laughing, joking man who had been struggling just a few moments before.
Bruce's gauntlets were vital in blocking the potential cuts but just as soon as he would catch the knife between the prongs, the fake Bat would find a way to slip it out with the utmost efficiency. Bruce couldn't get a hold of it long enough to take it away from him.
One mistimed step landed Bruce with a graze to his side, he could feel the slight tear in his body armor and the burn of rust as it entered his bloodstream. The feeling made him pull away from the other man, he needed to end this fight.
"Get him, Tom!" Yelled the faceless man from seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. Bruce had lost track of him in the struggle
The three words hit Bruce, taking him off guard. Tom, short for Thomas. Bruce froze at that terrible thought. His father was a master of the surgical knife, the southern voice didn't match his memory but it was so exaggerated that it could be fake.
A moment's hesitation was all 'Tom' needed to plunge the knife into Bruce's gut.
As Bruce fell to his knees, looking up at the man who might be his father, a glint caught his eye from a street light nearby, it illuminated something that hurt more than the knife ever could. Bruce recognized the old, run down theater still advertising Excalibur and Zorro. It was so fuzzy but felt so close.
Bruce heard a click behind his head and felt a shiver run up his spine.
BANG
Bruce felt his cowl explode into a thousand tiny pieces, he felt his head smash against the sidewalk, he even felt the bullet rub against the base of his skull. Bruce felt every disturbing sensation, but on the inside, he found he felt nothing at all. Bruce could only remember being this empty once before.
Bruce took one last look at the theater. His journey had come full circle.
To Be Continued
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Author's note:
The reality Bruce visits first is based on 2004's Grayson. Check it out on YouTube and read the script they wrote at Untamed Cinema's website. It frightened the hell out of me when I was a kid but growing up I quickly recognized it to be the greatest Batman story ever told and just had to pay homage to it with my little finale.
The second reality is of course intended to be set some time after the Dark Knight Rises, the idea of Bruce retiring from Batman always feels so temporary to me.
The third reality is set during the flashback sequence of the magnificent Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.