“The TruBatman Show,” Part 2

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this story was published on this site December 28 and can be found here. We’re getting back to the regular schedule of posting classic BID columns. Part 3 (of 3) will appear on Monday.

Originally published July 17, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1287

“The TruBatman Show, Part 2”

The arctic wasteland stretched before him.

Bruce Wayne drew the white camouflage more tightly around himself, approaching the entrance he knew was waiting for him. He’d been there before, any number of times, but it had always been under carefully controlled circumstances. It had never been like this, never in some sort of skulking manner. And never, ever, under a circumstance where he felt that he could trust no one.

They had all turned against him.

Beneath the encompassing folds of his hood, Bruce smiled grimly. Many years ago, Ðìçk had convinced him to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was, Ðìçk had said, the ultimate in paranoid fantasy. On that basis, he had figured that Bruce would connect with it. Pride had prevented Bruce from admitting that Ðìçk had been absolutely right.

That’s what it had become like for Bruce. Everyone around him had begun to take on a different, sinister form. For the first time, it seemed as if they were all hiding something.

It gave him pause, as he thought about his life. Thought about the times when he had been investigating the murder of his parents, only to be distracted from it by the Batsignal illuminating the sky. Thought about the occasions when he had considered giving it all up, only to find some new and greater threat presented him, something he could not ignore. Most significantly, he thought about the time when he had faced opponent after opponent, become so worn down that, deep within, he’d questioned whether it was time to hang it up. And then Bane had broken his back—and suddenly nothing became more important than making himself once more into the man he had been.

Bruce slipped, his feet going out from under him, and he fell hard to the icy surface. He lay there for a moment, taking a drag on the oxygen and reinvigorating himself, before hauling himself to his feet and continuing his quest.

Ever since that creature with Kryptonian markings had fallen from the sky, he had suspected that his answers would lie with Superman. But Superman had suddenly gone missing, informing the rest of the Justice League that he had to attend to a “mission in space.”

It had smacked too much of convenience.

Because it had happened just about the same time as the abrupt crime wave that had swept Gotham. And then earthquakes: earthquakes, of all things, even though—last time Bruce had checked—there were no fault lines beneath the city. And the decision to abandon Gotham, to force all the citizens out because it was ostensibly unsalvageable, in defiance of the constitution of the United States. Bruce had tried to get a protest going, but no lawyer had seemed interested in handling the case. Not even Ingersoll.

All of it, collapsing down around Bruce—and once upon a time, he would have considered it a mass of problems to which he had to attend.

Now he saw them as distractions. Distractions and nothing more. Uncanny in their timing, bizarre in their conception.

It had taken everything he had to turn his back to them. Even now, he fancied he could hear their voices crying out to him, the shouts of desperation:

“Batman, why have you abandoned us?”

“Batman, where are you in our time of need?”

“Batman… Batman… Batman… dadadadadadada-dadadada… Batman!”

His vision began to become hazy, and for a moment he fancied he saw the signal in the sky. He closed his eyes tightly, turned away, and, when he looked again, it was gone.

And then, not far ahead, he saw the entrance. The hidden entrance to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

There were bøøbÿ traps, of course, dangers guarding the way, but he was able to bypass them. He had, after all, trained his entire life for this. The detection devices of the Fortress did not even register his presence. All of his abilities and skills helped him to glide past them. Once inside, he shed the white garb which had hidden his presence out on the frozen wasteland and he drew his cape around him, feeling in some strange way alive for the first time.

Then he heard noise: voices from not too far ahead of him. The tall, glistening walls didn’t seem to have any shadows about them at all, yet Batman managed to find them and hide within them. He drew near the sound of the voices, and they were all chattering briskly in another language—a language Batman surmised was Kryptonian. He wasn’t entirely sure why it made sense to deduce that—but it did, nonetheless.

He found one room and peered in. There were several men and women there and there was a vast array of monitors. They appeared to be checking out sites, methodically and steadily. Many of them looked exhausted, as if they’d been at it for hours—even days. Batman squinted slightly, not sure that he was seeing what he was seeing.

They were viewing all over the world, but several of the spots seemed to be such familiar venues as Wayne Manor. The Batcave. Commissioner Gordon’s office. The Batmobile—yes, there was one angle there that suggested there was some sort of a camera in the dashboard of the Batmobile itself. But how, how was it possible? It made no sense.

He had to find Superman. Had to sort it all out.

Then his attention was drawn more closely to one of the people on the monitors. What caught his attention was that the man bore a passing resemblance to the man beneath the mask of Batman. His hair was grayed, but he looked like—

—like—

As if sensing that he was being watched, the man at the monitor suddenly turned, frowning in confusion. But Batman had already ducked from sight.

Batman—was afraid.

He had never felt that way before, no matter how abysmal life had become for him, no matter how daunting the challenge. Fear was something that had been alien to his makeup.

But now he sensed that he was on the verge of something. Something truly horrifying, something that cut to the core of everything that he was—or thought he was.

Father? The word echoed in his head, and it was everything he could do not to give voice to it. He wanted to run back into the room, to confront the man, to ask for an explanation of the inexplicable. He had to be mistaken. Except—

He pushed the thought from his mind. He needed to know more. Before he engaged in any such face-to-face, he had to know more.

He slipped away, passing by the zoo, the area where Superman kept life forms from around the galaxy, usually the last of their kind, so they would be preserved.

He noticed something immediately: They weren’t moving.

For a second, but only a second, he thought they were asleep. But then he saw several of them in some sort of mid-activity position. It was as if they’d been—shut off. Like something in Disneyland, deactivated until such time as a new array of tourists showed up.

He kept moving, his booted feet making no noise whatsoever on the Fortress floor.

Then he heard more voices. Again, they were speaking in that bizarre tongue. Except, this time, he recognized several of them. He couldn’t quite believe it, and part of him screamed within his head that he was mistaken. But, no, they were clear and distinct and eminently recognizable.

A door loomed before him. He hesitated only a moment. A lesser man would have hesitated longer, possibly even would have turned away. But he was not a lesser man. At least, he didn’t think so.

He shoved the door open and all the voices came to a stop at once. Dozens of pairs of eyes stared at him in clear shock and confusion.

The Joker, without his make-up, drinking coffee. Two-Face, with the scarred side of his face healed, reading a book. Catwoman, playing what appeared to be some sort of card game with Commissioner Gordon. Tim Drake, talking with… with…

Jason Todd, who was busy cleaning up a table covered with litter and food scraps.

The room was filled with tables, chairs, vending machines, and people. People from throughout Batman’s life, all relaxed and interacting and behaving as if this was the most normal thing in the world—until Batman walked into the middle of it, Alice through the looking glass.

They rose as one, but no one said a word. There seemed nothing that they could possibly say.

“Bruce—”

Batman whirled and saw a familiar blue-and-red-clad figure behind him.

“I think we have to talk,” said Superman.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.