beyondthesuit | Dated March 19, 2012

Dated March 19, 2012

A few hours in and he has to adapt. Healing and dressed like a normal citizen of the island, Terry's world starts spinning itself into some kind of order. He folds up his Batsuit in a knapsack from the clothes box and keeps it on his person, but doesn't wear it. He starts crafting stories in his head, like he used to tell his mom when he came home with bangs and bruises that couldn't be hidden under clothing.

A few hours in and Terry McGinnis is on the island. Batman's brief appearance remains only with the first few who saw him.

Only one obstacle remains and it lives next door to Cass and Steph and, for now, him too. As he sits on the warm ground, trying to figure out what to do and what it all means, his eyes keep drifting toward the other hut. Bruce isn't home now, but if he's anything like the Bruce that Terry knows, eventually he'll come back to his cave. And when that time comes...

Well. Terry's not actually sure what comes after that. Hi. So you don't know me yet. But when you're old and there are no Robins or Batgirls. You get me. How's it going? I'm Terry.

Yeah, that'll go well.

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No matter what else happens, if there is one thing I can trust the kids with, it's coming to me with news. Perhaps if there was only one of them on the island— only Stephanie, only Damian, only Jason— then news would take longer to return to me, but between the four of them on the island, it's usually an abundance of news that I get by the day, never less. I know, before I return to the house that day, that there is another person on the island I should be concerned about, a young man proclaiming himself to be Batman. I keep close enough of an eye on the island population that I know the name that he goes by as a civilian.

I also know that I have no intention of trusting him from step one.

When it comes time to face the issue, it's on my own terms. I expect to see Terry as I saunter back that day from the Winchester, a straw basket with the day's leftovers in hand, and a few weapons in my pockets. The sort one wouldn't expect to find on an island like this, and enough to knock the guy out if I need.

"Need something?" I ask, stepping into view and seeing the way the young man's eyes are fixed on the house.

It's hard to explain what exactly he feels. It's not like seeing a ghost, exactly. More like an old photograph brought to life and laid over someone else. The limp isn't there, nor the gray hair, but the dark, craggy look says Bruce all over. Bruce in his prime who wouldn't even favor Terry with a second punch, much less give him a suit.

"Bruce..." He doesn't so much say it as the word escapes from him. Fear and elation gut through him and nothing less than his own Bat instincts force him to his feet.

"I'm...I'm Terry."

"That's what I've heard," I reply, distant, if not necessarily trying to sound unkind. But that's a front for the rest of the people on the island. The Wayne house is built fairly close to where a few other residents live, not out on the outskirts, because the Bruce Wayne I've been never would've cared to be so far from the general populace. On the all too likely chance that someone crossed our paths, it becomes necessary for me to act the part.

"So," I shrug, hands slipping into my pockets. "What can I do for you, Terry? I don't think an exclusive interview with the head of the Wayne legacy will get you very far on the island, but I guess early drafts never hurt."

"If I said I was from about forty years in the future and you willingly passed on the Batsuit for me, how fast would I end up facedown in the ocean?" Terry tries to frame it like a joke, but if an eighty-year-old Bruce can take down half a gang of Jokerz, then this one can probably knock Terry out before he's even made a fist.

"I'm...well you probably don't believe me. But I'm not a liar. Or a thief."

Not anymore.

That this boy immediately connects Bruce Wayne and Batman in broad daylight grates on my nerves. I know that people have connected the two identities together, that even without any of the others having given away the details in moments of frustration or confidence alike, my true identity has other ways of leaking out. In some worlds, I'm nothing more than a work of fiction. It's not possible to approach Tabula Rasa like any other place.

Still, if there's something to be said about the people on this island, it's that they are talented in any number of ways. To think that I'd always notice if someone was within earshot would be too bold and confident of me.

"It obviously isn't me you're thinking of," I reply wryly.

"Not yet."

It feels like he's just come out of a fight with Spellbinder and Shriek, disoriented and lost. This Bruce has no need of Terry, no desire to coach him or make him stronger, and the eerie sense of the photograph is only stronger. The Bruce Wayne of 2053, the one who knows and maybe even trusts Terry a little bit, is shrinking in the distance.

"Someday, you're going to meet a no-account, waste of space punk," Terry says. He makes sure to stand straight and look Bruce in the eye, hoping to impress that he's worth that confidence. "And you're going to give him a chance."

"I don't give chances to wasted space," I reply, holding his gaze. I've taken in plenty of people under my wing, brought a great deal of potential into the manor. Maybe the rest of the world had already written them off, or didn't have a place for them to go. But I saw something in each of them that I couldn't simply give up on.

"But I've given plenty of people chances already. Why would I need to take up another?" I ask, curious to see what he has to project about each one of our respective futures. Does this young man even know Dick? Jason? Damian? I can't imagine that all of them are out of the business in forty years.

How does he answer that exactly? Say that he swore it off after Tim Drake? Or that Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson have grown up and left? That Damian and Steph and Cass seem to have no existed at all?

"I think I'm from–and I know I sound crazy–a different timeline? You know. So things played out differently."

The next part catches in his throat because the Bruce in front of him is solitary, but he's not alone. No, he'll just answer that question a different way.

"I got my hands on the suit once. Stopped some folks who were trying to use your company to do some pretty terrible things and–"

Is this a card he should play? Or will Bruce understand because of it.

"I did it because they killed my dad."

I pull a bit closer to the house. If he's done his research, he knows that this house is mine— built practically to order, it's no secret to the island that Bruce Wayne owns this piece of property anyway, constructed with the help of Clark Kent. More people than those from our city seem to know that there's a relationship between myself and Clark. I don't know how exactly, although I have my suspicions.

Being painted as fictional isn't the most surprising thing I've ever encountered before.

"If you did your research, you'd know that there are plenty of citizens who've encountered different versions of people they know," I tell him, but I'm starting to lose interest by the second. He's not anyone I know, I can't trust him right away. My objective should still be to return home.

"Who were they? The people who killed your father."

"I'd tell you to give me a break since I've only been here a few hours and they've been spent getting Joker bruises off me, but it's you." Terry smirks. "You don't give breaks."

Only then does it occur to him that after the initial jaunt with the Batsuit, Terry and Bruce have never really talked about his father's death.

"Later in life, another company buys in. It becomes Wayne Powers and Derek Powers decides to use it to sell nerve gas to the discriminating dictator, under the table."

Then the sarcasm runs out and Terry sighs. "And my dad found out."

"It's not me, it's the job," I correct him. "The job doesn't leave any of us with real breaks."

That much is true. There are times when we may catch a break, by sheer grace of chance, but more often than not, the challenge that comes with the mantle is the neverending nature of it. We have to be prepared for any possibility and every eventuality.

"I've never heard of Derek Powers."

Such as that. Never heard of the man, but apparently it's enough to start toppling everything that Wayne Enterprises is and stands for.

"So your father was a whistleblower, I take it."

"Maybe he would have," Terry says, voice hard. Why can't Bruce understand? He just stands there all cool and monolithic. He's got the face of the man who saved him but nothing else. It brings out the sarcasm in him.

"If he'd lived long enough."

"Yes," I say, narrowing my eyes. "And what would you have me do about that here? Derek Powers is not on this island. There is no way to deal justice out to those who deserve to be put down, because this island limits us."

I cross my arms over my chest, and I can see that he's every bit as frustrated as I am. That's one thing anyone from Gotham seems to share here.

"What would your plan be?"

"Derek Powers isn't anywhere anymore," Terry says. His words are tight and he looks up at Bruce. "He became, well, as he'd call it a blight on the earth. With the same toxin he tried to sell off."

Terry half thinks he should just stop talking. Bruce is never going to believe him.

"I don't know yet. Get the stink of a dead Joker off me, maybe."

There's an anger that I recognize in the tone, and even in the darkened appearance of the boy's eyes, no matter how much I wish that I didn't. There are dozens in our position across the world, possibly hundreds, certainly millions over the history of mankind. What worries me, too, are those words.

My eyes narrow, and I think the next answer may be one of the most important of all.

"Did you kill him?"

"He was already dead," Terry replies. "Long ago. But he found a way to cheat and I had to lay old demons to bed."

He won't explain that. Won't tell Bruce that he was the one who did it, for real. Or why he did it. What happened to Tim Drake and the reprisal for it were what put Robin and Batgirl suits in their cases forever and changed Bruce Wayne for good.

"You're not getting to the point," I remark, quickly growing more suspicious by the minute. He's hiding something, and while there's a chance that he knows what he's doing in making that choice, I don't make a habit of trusting people I've only just met. I don't have that luxury.

I've been duped plenty of times before, and every time I come away knowing that it's better to be too suspicious than not enough.

"He found a way to cheat? Lay old demons to bed? What exactly does that mean?"

Terry wants to groan in frustration, but he knows that that won't do him any favors either. "I'm not telling you because what the Joker did to beat death? How he did it? It was so wrong and slagged that you haven't talked about it in forty years." It was that bad. That wrong.

To tell Bruce that he killed the Joker for tearing apart Tim Drake's mind? About the night that tainted the Batman name forever?

He won't spit on that legacy.

"That should be all the more reason to tell me," I reply, tone low. Something that I wouldn't talk about in forty years? I wonder. There are plenty of things that I tend not to talk about, no matter how often I run over them in my mind. Jason's death went unacknowledged for years, save for the suit that I kept out in the cave to serve as a reminder.

There was still an important lesson to be learned from what happened, however, and if I can learn that before tragedy strikes, then all the better.

"With all we know about this place, maybe this knowledge can be retained as a warning."

Terry bites down on another sigh, wrestling with himself and the memory of the look of absolute pain hidden in old Bruce's face at the thought of his Robin. Is this the right thing? Maybe if he just gives only as much detail as he has to.

"Way before me...Years and years. The Joker...he kidnapped. He kidnapped one of your Robins and he did some really sick stuff to his head. So sick that you'd had enough. You meant to kill him but it was Robin that got the killing blow."

And it should have been done then. But this part, at least, is easy. This part is Terry's story.

"But the Joker had an insurance plan. His whole self embedded on a microchip, piggy backed on Robin's subconscious. He came up against me. Thought I'd be the same old Bat, have the same tricks. But I got the better of him."

Is it something the Joker would do? Certainly. I already see flashes of Jason in my mind, the way I found him, battered and bruised, the strikes falling any which way. Not in a pattern which would have taken him easily out of commission, but instead wherever physics would land the blows. And if the Joker could find some way to plant his consciousness into another person's body and take it over entirely, of course he would try.

But as far as I'm aware, there's no way for him to manage that without notice.

In that many years, however...

"What happened to Robin? Which Robin was it?"

"He looked fine, before I left. Battered and bruised, but Joker-free."

It feels like a betrayal to say his name and Terry stands there a long time, imagining Tim Drake's face as he slowly slipped back into himself.

"Tim."

Tim. I feel my eyes harden at that. Not Jason. Joker moved on from there. But Tim.

It sounds so much like something he'd do. And the fact that this young man knows, so shortly into his time on the island, that Tim Drake is one of my Robins— neither does he bat an eye at the thought of there being more than one— has me trusting more the idea that he is closely related to me in some way.

Whether or not it's positive, I can't say for certain.

"So what is it that you're trying to get here?"

"What? From you? From this place?" Terry isn't sure he actually has an answer for either of those questions. It's hard enough just moving and letting go of the story, watching Bruce get the same hardness in his eyes that he always had. It translates through years.

"'Cause I guess I want you to believe me. As for the second question, I don't know. I just got here."

"From this conversation," I clarify. "More the former than the latter."

I'm still not convinced that any of us is on the island for a reason. No reason beyond the arbitrary whims of some empowered force or madman, at least. But I'm not much of a believer in fate.

To have that kind of faith wouldn't do anyone favors, from what I've seen.

"One conversation isn't going to convince me of much," I tell him. "I suggest you settle in as well as you can for the time being. My goal is to leave the island. I doubt there's much for us to gain from being here."

It's Bruce. He should know that a few words won't convince him of anything. Terry's smarter than that, knows the old man better.

But the part of him that doesn't think, the one that's all tangled up with instincts and hopes, is crumpling into itself.

"You don't...you don't trust me now. But I swear, in my world, you will."

But now he has no way to prove himself.

I can see something change slightly in his expression. Is it disappointment? Something about him screams of being a child.

And I don't know what to make of that.

"I think we're done for today," I tell him. "But I'm sure we'll run into each other soon."

Let's seem him work up a decent track record first. A day means nothing.

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Dated March 19, 2012

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