"Thus you shall go to the stars."
Virgil, The Aeneid (Book IX, line 641)
"There's the door," Bart says without missing a beat. My jaw slacks a bit, and I turn around to leave. So much for trying to explain myself.
I step silently into the hallway and pull the door shut behind me. I head to the end of the hall—an open window, about my size—and go airborne.
Bart's leg is screwed up—again. Is it my fault?
Arguably.
I get altitude quickly, rocketing into the night sky. The cool air rushes against my face. It's…therapeutic. I angle my head to the side and I make a wide loop in the sky around Frisco. Both sides of the bay are alive with the light and vigor of a Saturday night. I almost want to be there. Experiencing it. Soaking it in.
I hear a mechanical crackling in my ear. It's my earpiece communicator coming on. I tap my ear lightly, activating the beacon. I kick into high gear, and the bay area fades away. Lights in the distance, from Sacramento, are already visible and getting closer.
"Yeah?" I say curtly.
"It's Cassie. Where are you?"
"Over Sacramento," I say. Beneath me the city flashes by in an instant. "On my way to Metropolis."
"You left in a hurry. I didn't get a chance to say good-bye."
"Then say it now."
A pause. Reno comes into my field of vision…and passes.
"You wanna talk about it?" she asks. Cass is good at reading people. She can tell if something is wrong within a few seconds of talking to you. But I'm not trying to hide anything, so that makes her job easier.
"No," I say. "It's in the past. I can't change anything."
"And you're sure about that?"
"Very," I say without missing a beat. "Listen, I'm coming in on Denver. The mountains might interfere with the signal. If you have something to say, make it quick."
"Stop making excuses," she says pointedly. "We're worried about you, Conner."
"Uh-huh."
"Please," she implores. "Talk to me. Let me help you through this."
"Sorry, Cass," I say. "I don't need help. I need time." I tap my ear lightly and the communicator clicks off.
I need some place where I can sort things out. Some place familiar. The lights of Metropolis shine brightly in the distance. It's beautiful. Therapeutic. My x-ray vision kicks in, and I find it in a few seconds.
1938 Sullivan Street.
After I leave Bart's room, I head straight for the monitor womb.
Gar and Vic are entrenched in the PS2 and Cass is curled up in one of the beanbag chairs, talking into her handheld communicator. She's probably got Conner on the other end. If he needs me, he can call.
The Monitor Womb is situated at the base of the Tower. Monitors of various sizes stretch up the length of the womb for 100 feet. With the multitude of monitors, we can keep continuous feeds on situations. Bank robberies, police chases, and so forth. The central PC station is on hover lifts so it can move up and down, to see all the screens. Not unlike a Mobius Chair...
Bart once broke the chair and several monitors trying to test the speed of the hover lifts. He's not allowed in the womb unsupervised anymore.
Raven's on duty, her eyes locked onto a police chase in Star City.
"Busy night?" I say from a vantage point behind the central PC station.
"No more than usual," she says distantly. "I take it Conner found what he was looking for."
"You'd have to ask him."
Raven turns to me. "Care to talk about it?"
"Not really," I say, turning my attention back to the police chase. Green Arrow shows up, landing on the hood of the stolen vehicle.
"I suppose that's fair," Raven says.
"Conner can take care of himself," I say. "I need to get back to Gotham."
"Consider it done," Raven says, pressing a button on the control console. "And Robin?"
"Yeah?" I say as the blue energy bands appear around me.
"I don't know what Luthor did, maybe I don't want to."
"Alright," I say awkwardly.
"But something doesn't feel right. I can tell by the way you carry yourself. Be careful."
I smile and give her a mock salute. I close my eyes, and feel the sudden jolt of the teleporter dissembling my molecules and relocating them in Gotham City.
I open my eyes…and I'm in the cave. I look around me, taking a quick inventory of what sparse furnishings Bruce has down here. Costumes of fallen partners. A giant penny. An equally giant playing card with a ghastly Joker litho staring back at me.
So many memories.
Ahead of me is the Batcomputer. I guess we have Dick to thank for the application of the prefix 'bat' to everything down here: Batcomputer, Batmobile, Batplane, Bat…shark repellant. I guess it helped him put some light among the darkness. Valiant. Useful too.
The main screen on the computer glows a dim green, showing a video feed of a man sitting in his padded cell, bound in a straitjacket and huddled in the cornerlike some frightened animal. Bruce stares thoughtfully at the screen.
I approach the computer, and stand next to Bruce. Oddly enough, Bruce isn't in the suit. He actually looks like…Bruce Wayne. His jet black hair starts at a prominent widow's peak and pulls back tightly over his skull—from years of wearing the cowl, training his hair to that behavior. Dark trousers and a black turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up around his elbows absorbs the light from teh screen. This is…interesting. Even when he's not in the suit, he still prefers dark colors.
"How was San Francisco?"
"Fine," I say, half expecting him to bring up the Luthor incident earlier. I lay a hand on the chair back. If he noticed it, he didn't say anything. He hardly says anything anymore. He just sits here avoiding the sun like some Albino, watching his video feeds like some paranoid FBI Agent. It can't be healthy.
I slide my thumbs under the corners of my mask, and pull it off. Finally, I'm looking at things with my own eyes, not star-lite lenses.
"What's up?" I ask. "Nigma break out again?"
"Does it look like it?" Rhetorical questions. I hate 'em.
"Then…what are you doing?"
"Keeping my enemies closer," he says distantly. "How's Bart's leg?"
"He's fine," I say. It was bound to come up anyway. Part of thinks recriminates myself for thinking Bruce wouldn't find out about our little escapades underneath Goodwin Airport. Hell, if it happens within the Western Hemisphere, Bruce is on to it. Paging George Orwell…
"Good," Bruce says. "Are you staying?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's a room prepared for you upstairs if you want to stay. You're welcome to, of course."
"Aren't I always?" I ask with a smirk. I reach under the neckline of the cape and undo the fasteners. The cape falls off the back of my shoulders. I catch it, and sling it over my shoulder.
Bruce doesn't answer my question. He presses a button on the console and the image of Nigma changes to a picture—more like blueprints, technical readouts—of a gray framework orb housing a small red ball. Almost like an…eye.
Bruce sips from a tea cup nearby, sets the cup back on a silver tray next to him, and stares at the screen.
"So that's it?" I ask lightly.
"Yes."
"And you're sure about this? You're not…worried about what they might do."
"Whatever they try to do won't work, Tim," he says. I allow myself a smile. Bruce is as self-assured as ever. It's…impressive. "Anything they try can only make me stronger."
"What, uh…whatever happened to forgive and forget?" I ask disjointedly.
"This isn't that simple," Bruce says, standing and facing me. "No matter what happens. What I do or what they do...they'll make me right. Everything I've ever done will be justified."
"Yeah," I say, looking away from him for a moment as I ponder. Thing is…I know Bruce. I know him very well. And I can understand where he's coming from. I'm only going on what he's told me—it was before I even started following Batman's pursuits—but…the League tampered with his mind. His one inviolate asset. And for what? So they wouldn't have to explain themselves?
This business with the League…this is Bruce Wayne at eight years old all over again. Reduced to helplessness—seeing his world fall apart around him. This is Bruce Wayne trying to make up for something, trying to compensate for an inconsistency—an injustice—in his life...in order to make himself better. It's valiant, if tragic.
I tell myself I understand what he's up against. What he's trying to do. And I'll stand there with him. No matter what. It's the least I can do.
Bruce reaches across the keyboard, grabs a manila folder, and hands it to me.
"Here," he says. "This is for you."
"What is it?"
"Just open it," he replies. His chair rotates around to see me. He slouches in the seat, folds one arm over his chest and raises a pensive finger to his mouth, watching me open the folder.
I pull back the small metal tabs holding the envelope lip in place, and pull out a small stack of papers. A formal cover page adorns the papers, the seal of the city of Gotham embossed on the upper corner. Department of Child Services.
My eyes narrow dubiously, and I flip through the rest of the papers. Forms to be filled out, questionnaires. It's all there.
This is a petition for adoption. My eyes go back to Bruce.
"I…I don't understand," I say quietly.
"You're sixteen years old," Bruce says. I can sense the awkwardness in his voice. He can scare the everlasting piss out of a serial rapist, but he doesn't do hear-to-heart very well Part of me wonders if Alfred put him up to this. "You need a place to hang your hat. I realize it's not much."
"No," I say, astounded. "It's…more than enough."
"I mean," Bruce says awkwardly. "You said it yourself."
"What?"
"Batman needs a Robin."
"You don't have to do this, Bruce," I say, playing the humble angle.
"Says who?"
The End