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professoruber · 4 months

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Thoughts of Birds of Prey (2023-) #6

Spoilers for Birds of Prey (2023-) #6

So the newest issue of the current Birds of Prey comic has recently come out and I guess since I took the time to make multiple fairly long-ish posts about this run, I should go over my thoughts here.

To sum things up... I thought it okay but also not really too big of a fan by the end of it. I didn't exactly dislike it, but I guess it left me with too many questions and felt a bit too contrived. It was enjoyable enough, but kinda felt like my enjoy-ness of it decreased with each subsequent issue. It wasn't bad, but I guess that's my knee-jerk fresh reaction.

Of course, it still possible that there is more to the story than there is now and that future issues will reveal new information which might clear up some of my issues more, I'll be discussing that as well...

Note again that I am a novice in comics, and Gotham Academy was one of the first I read fully so perhaps I'm biased in that area. But to go over my thoughts for why I kinda feel slightly disappointed in more detail...

What was the point of Meridian?

Warning of future doom, apparently. So as it turns out, the real reason that Barbara wasn't include was because she died eleven times already

(the fact that this was far from Meridian's first attempt was foreshadowed last issue with her noting where the last battle "always is"). So someone is out to get the Birds of Prey, and they're possibly using Future Maps time travel tech to do it.

While this does somewhat answer the question of why Barbara was specifically excluded; still doesn't explain the secrecy.

Like, all these visions of Barbara dying have her in her Batgirl outfit, so couldn't she just have been informed she'd die and asked to oversee the mission as Oracle? Or does that also somehow lead to her death?

Being kept in the loop would also presumably have greatly helped avoid awkward feelings like this. And from what I know of Barbara, her tactical mind is probably more valuable than her martial art skills. But I guess whatever evil time traveller is targeting the BoP would've found a way to get to Babs anyway? (also on a side note; Barbara getting hurt by not being included was at least one thing I kinda predicted. My other, more thougt-out predictions though... well I'll get to those in a bit)

It also confirms that Dinah indeed did not apparently get any explanation for why she had to exclude Barbara until after the mission was complete and.... that feels weird?

Like I said, I'm a novice on comics (although I am now definitely adding more Birds of Prey stuff to my to-read list) so I'm not the biggest expert on these characters. Nevertheless it feels that Black Canary here would've agreed to attack Wonder Woman and her people while excluding Oracle all on the word of a time traveller she's likely never met before (and in the present is a teenager who she's likely never met before either) without even demanding a damn good explanation first.

I guess it was more dramatic from a story perspective for Meridian to reveal this stuff now and set up the next arc. But it still just feels contrived to me. Maybe I'm overlooking/overthinking something though?

Meridian's Motives

So I've gone over a theory before that Meridian was in fact evil and possibly even connected to Megaera. That theory was not confirmed, or overly supported, by this. And it does seem like Meridian is probably on the up-and-up.

Perhaps I'm a tad biased/sunk-cost fallacy right now since I spent a decent amount of time on the theory of Meridian being evil, but still worth noting that this mission ended up Megaera possessing Sin, albeit with Sin in control (and presumably actually in control because Megaera said Sin was in control while Sin used the lasso on her).

There's still quite a few similarities between Meridian and Megaera which are a bit difficult to overlook (you can check out the link I placed above where i went into more detail into that).

Its worth noting as well that Meridian mentioned that whichever evil time traveller is targeting the BoP, they're using her technology most likely. An interesting detail, and one which raises q

Could it be Meridian is hiding something still? All the information we know about the future and her motives comes from her after all.

Or could it be she's being controlled without her knowledge? Or a second Meridian is up and about?

Perhaps it seems like I'm still focusing a disproportionate amount on Meridian, but she still remains the driving force behind all this issues of the narrative which have somewhat hurt my enjoyment and given me questions.

And to repeat what I've said before. Meridian seems like a strange direction for the character of Maps Mizoguchi.

As I've alluded to before, I'm probably quite biased in this area because I've read Gotham Academy years ago before I really got into comics like I have recently and it was one of the first runs I've finished and stuff.

Maps is a character who wants to be Robin. And that's the path which she seems to have been developed upon during her fairly recent return.

Given how still early she is in her storyline of becoming Robin (or some other kind of vigilante) it just still feels like a strange choice for Maps Mizoguchi of all people to show up as a time traveling hero with a persona and skillset which seems in stark contrast to her every prior appearance.

Meridian does not appear to be a martial artist, Maps doesn't appear to be a tech genius. Magic would seem like a more likely 'superpower' than super-tech for Maps considering the more supernatural focus of Gotham Academy.

Maps has been established with a preference for swords while Meridian is only shown fighting using a fancy taser.

Am I thinking too deeply into it? Probably, yes.

But still feels like an overall strange decision to introduce Future Maps in such a manner. Especially when Present Maps has only returned to semi-focus in recent years and still hasn't really developed too much in her own current goals (such as being Robin).

So taking a character who's still in need of a bit more focus and development and then giving them a future persona which is at contrast to their current development chain? Seems odd.

Also at first i just assumed Meridian comes from a post-apocalyptic future which would be retconned out of the timeline by this arc. But Meridian's comments about how she doesn't take time travel lightly and is trying to right the timeline suggests she does not in fact come from a post-apocalyptic timeline.

So does that mean Maps is destined to become Meriden?

Again, this is probably my bias due to Gotham Academy nostalgia. But I'm not sure if I'm too much of a fan of this direction for her.

Especially, as I keep noting, Present Maps has only barely gotten started on working on becoming Robin (or any-kind of vigilante); but Meridian seems to suggest Maps is going to drop her current direction and go in a completely different direction at some point in the future.

Well those of my thoughts I guess. I suppose I'll see how things develop from here.

While I did find the Birds of Prey quite well-drawn so far and fairly enjoyable. All this thoughts I've gone over and the general feeling this arc was a tad contrived has all somewhat mitigated my enjoyment.

#professoruber thoughts #dc comics #birds of prey 2023 #birds of prey 2023 spoilers #birds of prey #bop #comic review #comic criticism #maps mizoguchi #bop meridian #mia mizoguchi #dinah lance #dinah drake #dinah drake lance #megaera #sin lance #barbara gordon #batgirl #oracle

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annah-kitathryne · 11 months

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Batman Stays Dead AU

I want to preface this by saying that this is not completely based in canon yet, and it floating in the weird space between fanon and canon, as I will read the comics that directly lead up to how this idea could exist and the comics at the time this story would branch out. However, I was hit by brain worms that I could not ignore. That being said. This is an outline and by no means should be taken as the final product. That means that some stuff is vague, and some stuff is in detail. And a lot is subject to change as I read more, and expand the idea. If you don’t like please don’t send hate comments. Instead, create your version back on the original post so that others can see it. Thank you and enjoy reading

The original Idea can be found [here]

It was created by this person: @analviel

Word count: 8,000+

Warnings: Canon Batman, dysfunctional implied and stated relationships, underage use of substances, and discussions of health, conspiracy.

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Life for Timothy Drake had gone up in flames multiple times. At this point, he questioned what was left to burn considering the foundation in which his life had become was more than cracked, it was rubble. He was now down three parents, up a murderous adopted older brother, a murderous adopted younger brother, and two dead best friends, and had just been fired from his life’s work by his eldest adopted brother. To say he was probably the only person on earth going through this exact situation said a lot about how much everything had gone to shit. So yes, his life had been more than upended.

This was why, later when he had sorted through some things and finally gotten his bearings in the new normal, he would claim his breakdown was warranted, and looking back seemed like an underreaction to the whole situation. However, at the moment he wasn’t thinking. He was just doing.

The sound of glass breaking was when Tim finally started to become fully aware of what was happening around him, and what he was doing. Looking around there was overturned furniture, the sheets had been ripped, and the clothes in the dresser and the closet were in misshaped piles. Some of them were damp from what Tim was sure was a days-old water bottle he brought to his room during one of his research spirals. The glass was from a picture frame he must have recently thrown, considering it had just barely missed a pile of what were supposed to be the curtains on the window, and it was the only object that he could see that would have made the sound.

He gulps some air while tasting something salty. Tears. His hands are shaking and his body feels numb.

Giving himself a moment he goes and grabs the picture frame. Making sure to avoid the broken glass, because he doesn’t want to have to go downstairs and deal with a cut. Flipping it over he sees the picture of him and Bruce the day he was officially adopted.

Was it strange that it felt like decades ago?

Tim sighs as he looks around. He stands back up, places the broken picture onto a desk that wasn't supposed to be empty and starts surveying the room, looking for where to start. He saw what used to be the contents of his desk on the top of his torn mattress.

This was going to be a long evening? Morning? Did it matter at this point? Not really. This was just something better to do than allowing himself to think about everything that had happened recently.

He picks up piles of clothes and heads down the hallway to the clothing shute, slowly stuffing handful after handful of clothes as he counts the varying amount of words he saw on them. He would go down later and start the laundry. This was his mess, and there was no way Alfred would let him get away with the mess he created.

After cleaning the clothes and sheets out of his room, it felt less stuffy. The room seemed to have grown slightly. It was easier to breathe. Though logically he understood that it was because he could see the floor, and not because magic had suddenly expanded the room a couple of feet.

Continuing on he cleaned up the trash and the glass. Torn papers, a couple of old letters, and a piece of scratch paper that had a list of numbers he no longer needed. Putting them in the waste bin he would take them down to a main garbage bin later. After that, he put the pencil, pens, notebooks, and folders back into the drawers they had come from. Colour coding them as he went.

He never did that, but it was another task he could do to keep his mind occupied away from the breakdown it wanted to continue. He debated over the varying shades of purple, starting to think about Steph, when he huffed, clamped his hand over the offending pencil, and had to take a deep breath to remind himself that he has to finish cleaning up the mess he made.

The pencils had been lined up, and the books had been shelved by the subject. Something Tim hadn’t cared for, but was just another bit of time he could chip away at doing anything but working through his thoughts.

He then grabbed the trash bag he had collected and took it down to the larger bin. He turned down the hall and made it to the large washing room. He had at least two more hours before Alfred would notice anything, so he started the process of cleaning all of the clothes. Only now realizing the stains that some of them had collected since he got them.

When back in the hall he grabbed some generic sheets from the hall closet and made his way back into his room, the door clicking shut softly. He may be an absolute mess but he doesn’t want to have to deal with anyone’s ire for waking them up if they had slept through the breakdown he had just been having. Looking at the mattress he counted the holes. Three that wouldn’t impact the functionality of the mattress, so he flipped it over and made his bed. He could worry about the whole situation later when he figured out what to do with everything else.

By the time everything else was cleaned up, and all the laundry was done he felt worn down enough that he might be able to knock himself out and get some rest.

The next couple of days are a blur for Tim. He’s lethargic and he can’t do more than wrap the sheets around him any more. He looks at his computer screen and absently scrolls documents he doesn’t even really read. Even though he has done a total sum of nothing, he feels exhausted to his soul and bones.

Tim had been struggling with sleep for the last couple of days. Having become a creature of nocturnal habit for years going to sleep at a regular time seemed to be as foreign as a stranger. However, he finds that he ends up sleeping at a normal time, albeit a restless sleep.

It meant that when he woke up, the light of his alarm showed brightly enough that once the world stopped being blurred, it readout three twenty-four. It was well into the time that any patrol would be done for the night, and a couple of hours before anyone would be up and about. It was the perfect sweet spot when one could be alone with their thoughts.

Exactly the thing that Tim had been avoiding. However, it seemed that he didn’t need the odd hours to start thinking because the second Tim had knocked the rest of sleep away from his system he felt a sudden sense of wrongness.

He found himself looking around at the darkest corners, at the slightly open closet door, at the window that was still curtainless. He didn’t realize what he was doing until he finished checking everything. He was looking for Bruce, Batman, in those dark corners. As if the points from the cowl or the shine of a wristwatch would appear out of nothing.

Once he started thinking about Bruce he couldn’t stop.

He thought about how the cases that were being worked on, the rebuilding that would have been done, the training he was missing out on, and to go on with everything else, he felt the need to go down to the cave and start working on cases that weren’t his.

He reigned in those thoughts. He wasn’t Robin. Damian the little brat was in the colours. Bruce wasn’t Batman. Dick was The Bat now. He was working on cold cases that had been thrown to the wayside in all the chaos, and helping with research on current cases. He reined in the urge to go and put his Robin suit on, and made his way over to his desk, grabbing his computer and opening up a couple of case files to get his mind off everything.

Maybe he would be able to solve the Tresent case now that some time had passed.

It seemed that this wasn’t going to be the case because he realized he pulled up the information on the Omega Beam and the file that had been created on the whole ordeal. Maybe it was his poor impulse control or the fact that he had held the floodgates for too long, but he ended up reading the whole file, and the connecting files like they were a scripture that held the knowledge of a long-forgotten civilization.

The more he read, the more everything felt off. It just didn’t feel right. Especially everything surrounding Bruce. It just didn’t feel right. The Omega Beam, the casket lowered for Batman. It just wasn’t adding up to Tim. No one knew what the Omega Beam was, or what it did. They just knew that whoever it was appeared to be dead. For all, they knew it could move someone’s soul into some weird pseudoscience/magic containment cell, or be a cloning transport machine. Honestly, the sky had stopped being the limit years ago. Two of his best friends had been a speedster from the future, and a partial clone of Superman. Two things that just didn’t feel possible sometimes.

So really, the idea that Bruce could be out there somewhere wasn’t farfetched.

For a brief small moment, he considered how this could fix everything, how he could go running down the hall and exclaim to Dick what he thought. How he could shove all the cold cases to the side, and bring back Batman. How the city would go back to a sense of normal. But just as he was about to get up and go through with it he stopped.

He had no proof, he had nothing but a hunch and a bad feeling. While as vigilantes they had worked with bad feelings and hunches, most of the time it was small things. Checking an alley again, looking for closed feed cameras, or even investigating a random warehouse. This was not any of these situations. This was exclaiming that someone who people had seen die, was alive, with nothing but a bad feeling.

If he was wrong, and even if for a brief moment he brought everyone’s hope up again, it would ruin everything all over again.

He doesn’t tell anyone. Not in the following days. Not as he looks at places that have experienced unusual amounts of energy lately. Not since he had been cataloguing a web of places with old and new energy signatures across the planet. He doesn’t think about how deep it is. He doesn’t bother to realize what he could be sitting on. Not the possibility, not the high chance of disappointment.

This is the first time in a couple of weeks that he has had the energy to do anything. He is going to ride this motivation, and maybe take it down the halfpipe.

For everyone else, he locked it up away where it couldn’t be found. This was confidential information, and it was information that he needed to have airtight proof for if he was ever going to do anything about it.

The more he researched the more everything felt wrong. Like he knew he was walking on an old minefield and was just waiting for one of them to go off. He was waiting for the misstep to come.

He didn’t like the feeling, and he just seemed to be marching further and further into the field and not away from it.

He would deal with it later.

Tim buys a plane ticket to France. He just wants to check something out, get this all out of his system so that maybe he can move on, or find evidence.

So he packs a civilian suitcase and a more private vigilante case. He makes up some excuse about how he just needs a moment to get away from everything. Spins a story to Dick about he needs a week for himself, but that he isn’t leaving. He needs to be subtle about this trip, he can’t leave with people being suspicious about what he is going to do.

Dick is still suspicious, but everything has been so crazy that if his younger brother needs this, then he should go do it.

The next couple of days are filled with working on case backlogs, helping Alfred where he can, and pretending to be working on a new vigilante name. (Something that he does have to work on, but not right now)

Only a couple of hours before he leaves the Arkham alarm goes off, and it’s all hands on deck when the report comes in that Scarecrow has more or less fumed the whole city in fear toxin. People are fighting each other, buildings are being burnt, and more than half of emergency services are down.

He doesn’t have a suit, but he needs to be out there, so he takes his Robin suit, doesn’t listen to Damian’s protests exclaiming that he can’t wear the red and black suit, and ruses into the private changing areas.

The fact that the city is in chaos once again shouldn’t be the worst part, but the worst part is that no one had any sense of teamwork, and the leadership has been changed around.

Dick is now calling the shots while working with his current Robin, Damian, who is still working with the whole stab now, ask questions later mentality, the previous Robin, Tim, is one bad moment from a breakdown, and sitting on possibly the biggest discovery. This would be enough of chaos as is, but then adding in Barbra and Steph and the whole teamwork thing is more of a ‘we have the same goals, therefore we will all tolerate each other’.

Through investigation, they discover that there are at least fifteen different versions of the fear toxin on the streets, and they also discovered that it was being emitted from multiple forms of air conditioner filters, and multiple local brands of air fresheners.

While Oracle is tracking down the legal connections to hand over to the Commissioner, Batgirl is working with the hospitals to help move cures around Gotham, Batman and the New Robin are working on tracking down the main cell of Scarecrow and apprehending the rogue. Tim is in charge of tracking down and taking down the side cells, and making sure that there is nothing for them to fall back to and regroup.

It takes two weeks, and there are multiple fights and scream matches, but they all eventually get the job done. The hospitals are full, but each hour more people are being cured and sent home, the whole operation is busted, and Tim didn’t have time to think about Bruce.

Over comms, they took to calling him Red Robin, because of the colours of his suit. He doesn’t like it, but it will do for now.

They end up passed out in one of the least used safehouses in the network. A small apartment that has neighbours and was the last to always be upgraded. That wasn’t to say that it was rundown, but it was the most normal safehouse that could pass it off as a civilian place of living. However, for tonight there were four vigilantes in various states of delirium.

Tim was passed out on the couch in the living room, Steph had taken the coat in the second room, and Damian and Dick had taken the two beds in the main bedroom. It didn’t matter that no one wanted to talk to each other, that all of them were in various states of fighting, because they were too tired to care.

In the morning, Dick and Steph end up in the small galley kitchen looking at the contents in the fridge and freezer. They find some condiments, and several mouldy vegetables from whoever used the place last, and in the freezer, they find two full boxes of eggos.

The toaster in the kitchen was ancient but functional, and Steph was looking around for anything to add to it when she looked out the window and saw a corner store across the street. Quickly putting on a slightly too large pair of boots and grabbing twenty dollars from an emergency pouch in her belt she rushes over to the store.

She grabs an overly sugary fruit juice, a bottle of syrup, a small bar of butter, and the ripest berries she can find, and heads back over to the apartment.

Later that morning they find themselves sitting at the small table that had one end shoved against the wall. Dick to the head of the table that faced the wall, Domain took the chair that was between another wall and the table, and Tim and Steph ended up on the other.

There were three larger plates of waffles, a small bowl of berries, and butter and syrup also present. It was the most nuclear-type breakfast any of them had all together.

It was silent. Damian wasn’t complaining about the cheap cardboard-like food, Tim wasn’t head slumped over a table in whatever slump of mood he has been in recently, Steph wasn’t talking about something to fill the space, and Dick wasn’t trying to get anyone to do anything other than eat food.

It was nice. In the weirdest way possible.

The scraping of forks and knives could be heard along with the early morning noises of the city outside. The upstairs neighbours were arguing about something or another. Muffled enough that they could tell the tone, but muffled enough that they would have to concentrate to get the actual words to get the conversation.

The silence wasn’t something that they had all agreed upon, not something that they had preestablished before sitting down. It was being held down by the sticky syrup and the sleep deprivation they were all suffering from.

Tim took a bite of his eggo, it was soggy on one side and burnt on the other.

If he was actually in school and was being hounded by an English teacher that was exclaiming the deep metaphors and connections the small things made to the overall narrative of the story, he would be under the impression that said, teacher would have a field day with the possible connections an eggo had with his life story and current mental state.

However, seeing as he wasn’t in school, and didn’t have to think about English teachers outside of when he teamed up with Huntress, this wasn’t what he was thinking about.

He wasn’t even thinking, he was just eating an eggo.

If Tim were to do anything at all in these moments he would want to start yelling at every single one of them for various grievances, and issues. Instead, he just eats breakfast and basks in relative silence.

In the future when they sit down again for a similar breakfast, in the same safe house, they will talk about how this first breakfast was possible in the first place because Bruce wasn’t there.

Bruce hadn’t been there to make Damina feel like he had to measure up to everyone else, he wasn’t there to make Dick feel like he was a disappointment, he wasn’t there to make Steph feel like she was less than the other vigilantes, and he wasn’t there to make Tim feel like he was being graded for every action that he took.

It was a breath of fresh air that they needed, and this moment would set the first bit of groundwork that would build the family later.

The next couple of months sucked. There was no way around it. Tim still didn’t have a new call sign and was being regulated to work consisting of stealth missions, undercover, and receive for if anything went wrong.

One good thing that came out of the whole ordeal was the last of the backlog of files in the Batcave had been uploaded to the computer, put in special storage, and the number of cold cases had gone down significantly.

It was all good things that might not have been done, and in the end, they had found twenty-six serial killers and twelve serial arsonists, and some of the information finally moved to the computer came in handy with a recent case.

It was a net good, so Tim couldn’t find it in himself to hate it all that much.

What it also meant was that Tim was now going back to high school full-time. There was no No Man’s Land, no Alien Invasion, and to the public Bruce Wayne was alive. So he started going to school, and while he wanted to get it over and done with, after everything it was kind of nice just to be a kid for a bit, someone who shouldn’t have the fate of the world resting in their hands.

Dick was now an established Batman, and Damian was finally settling into Robin. He still had a long way to go, but without some of the pressure from Bruce, things started to settle down. Tim and Damian could now be left in a room alone, and not start fights with each other. Sure Tim still sometimes wished he could be the Robin to Dick’s Batman, but he’s starting to understand what Dick meant when he said it just wouldn’t work.

Sure they were all still making mistakes, with each other, their friends, the teams, and on and off the field, but that was just normal when a whole system had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Tim hadn’t thought about the possibility of Bruce being around in months. He would later understand that it was because things were going well, and that despite some dysfunctional issues, this was a real family.

He and Steph started over. They never got to know each other properly, and they needed to start working through their issues. They were finally friends.

He and Steph start working on missions and cases together. Putting together their combined knowledge and talents. They make an effective team. A team that should have worked together more often far earlier. Batgirl and whatever name Tim will eventually take make a formidable team. One that operates beside and separate from Batman and Robin.

It wasn’t long after this that Tim stumbled upon the clue to what Bruce has been doing this whole time.

He’s moving some boxes full of old stuff around, as they start to reorganize the mansion and downsize the amount of stuff they have lying around when he passes several portraits. Portraits that he hasn’t looked at since the last time they had to move stuff around after No Man’s Land.

He passes an old oil painting which had to be dated back to the pre-revolution era of the American colonies when he does a double take. He sets the box he had down and analyzes the painting in front of him. That was a painting of Bruce. Except it had to be at least three hundred years before Bruce was ever even thought of.

He stood there trying to make sense of it all when he remembered the conclusions that he had come to months ago had been right. Except he hadn’t considered the idea of a time travel device.

He was right.

Bruce was still out there and he was displaced in time.

He could do something about it.

Except when he caught himself thinking about that his head turned to look at the box he was moving. A box of decorations that Bruce loved, but no one else was partial to having out. The decision to move them had been a group choice. Something that everyone had sat down and talked about. They had set up a monitor to include Cass in the discussion.

It was something that wouldn’t have happened if Bruce had been there. It was something that would have been impossible with Bruce there.

Tim quickly turned back to the task he had been asked to do, and on his way back he removed the painting, putting it in one of the many unused rooms. This part of the manor wouldn’t be rotated until two weeks from now. He had time to figure out what to do, but for now, no one else could know. He didn’t know what they would do, and he didn’t want the pros and cons to not be compared before then.

He might have been slightly distracted the rest of the day Though everyone else checked it up to how everything seemed to be changing around the manor.

Later that night while everyone else was out on regular patrol and Tim had been relegated to cold cases again, he made his way to the portrait with a notebook and a bowl of chips. He sat in front of the painting that was leaning against the wall and just started thinking about what he should do.

He finds in the end that he knew what he was going to do the moment he walked into that room.

Tim sets up undercover work at the docks over the next couple of days, and throughout the next couple of days he brings over everything he needs, and at the end of the week, he sets up a bonfire.

He burns the oil painting, the notebook, and several other items that he doesn’t want anymore, and needs to get rid of. As the fire burns for the first time in months he feels a bone-deep sense of relief, as if the weights on his shoulders have disappeared.

It was the right thing to do. Things had finally started to become better. Everyone was working as a team, and they felt like a proper family. Gotham was under control, and things were looking up.

Things aren’t perfect but there is only room for upward improvement.

Ra’s al Ghul makes a move against Gotham, and what's left of the Bats, but it doesn’t work. They all work together, this time with Tim leading them. He helps set everyone into teams and has them all ready to fight back. They come up on top even better, and send Ra’s al Ghul back into the dark corner he came from.

They come out the other side a true family with all limbs and Organs in tack.

After everything had been cleaned up from the fight, Dick Tim and Steph end up with a bottle of whatever thousand-dollar bottle of alcohol they found in the manor. Never mind the fact that Tim and Steph shouldn’t be drinking and Dick should be stopping them. But they needed this, and they were safe in the manor to allow themselves to let go for a while.

They start talking about the past and what they wished they could change, how they were stupid kids in over their heads sometimes, and how they thought they could fight the whole world.

They talk about memories they had as Robin, before Robin, and the times they weren’t Robin but just Dick, Tim, and Steph.

They laugh and they cry. They share stories they haven’t told anyone in years, and for the first time, they all talk about Bruce, about the good times, the normal, and the bad. They talk about the things that they have kept to themselves for months, years, and what sometimes felt like lifetimes.

They all cry. If not for the past, but for what they wished it could be.

They all realize just how good things have been since Bruce left.

Cass comes back from Hong Kong two weeks later. She has news about what has been happening and is requesting some help.

Tim offers to go, but he doesn’t have a name yet, Cass says that it doesn’t matter and that she would be happy for him to come and visit. Steph comes along as well and the three of them leave Gotham in the hands of Batman, Robin, Huntress, and Oracle.

There is no fighting from each other. They are working as an amazing team.

They end up taking down a growing organization that was going to start shipping out supplies to multiple other villain groups around the world. They follow through with a report to the heroes in charge of the other villain groups.

During the trip, Tim and Steph come across another clue to Bruce being stuck in time. This time it's an old scroll that holds the account of a rogue fighter that was going around causing issues for the local authorities. It is the description of the fighter that tips both him and Steph off about the situation.

Steph had always been good at that sort of thing. Puzzles and Riddles and connecting pieces of things to see the greater picture.

She asks if Tim knew, and he replies that he did. He knew, and he had already destroyed a piece of evidence before.

They might have started a fight with each other that Cass becomes a part of. Soon they all give their piece on what they should do, but they all eventually agree to destroy it.

They burn the piece of history over a small fire in Cass’s apartment and share some food as they toast to a new future. Even if they all feel a little uneasy knowing that there must be more out there and they still deep down have the urge to get Bruce back, if not for varying reasons, they all know that this is right and that things will only continue to get better,

On their way back, Tim finds the name that he wants to go by Tanager.

There will be no more referring to him as the Red Robin, and there will be no more being held back as a backup. He is now back to being his vigilante, and his person.

Things continue from there. Tim is still in high school, and still makes it for Thursday game nights with his friends, and keeps grades that he hasn’t had since before he was Robin. Everything is going well.

He and Steph discover another clue while they are teaming up with a couple of other heroes on the west coast. It is an old gold rush town, and one of the houses is set up exactly how Bruce would set up a safe house with little resources. They move things around and generally remove any notion that it was Bruce who owned the house.

If they spend an extra day just exploring, no one was going to tell them no, Bruce wasn’t there to tell them that they were wasting time.

It has been a year since Bruce has been dead. They all gather together for a family meal. Dick, Tim, Damian, Stephanie, Cass, Barbra and the several animals that they have gotten since then. It’s great and they have an old memorial for him. They won’t speak ill of the dead today, but if the next weekend several pairs can be found bitching about how Bruce was, no one was going to be mad.

Within the next month, they move their base of operations out of the cave and the manor. That was Bruce, but as they were all aware they would all be more effective if they were in the centre of Gotham.

They do just that with one of the old buildings that Bruce owned. They fix it up, and they make it the head of operations on the main island of Gotham while using the Clocktower on the South Island as a secondary base, and they are in the process of setting up a base on the northern Island, but that is where Jason is holed up and none of them wants to have to deal with him right now.

They also don’t sleep in the same base they work in. They separate the two, and it does all of them well for their mental health.

It is also around this time that they all start seeing therapists start working through their problems. It was something that they needed earlier but that Bruce had refused to let them do. It makes things easier, and they are better heroes and people for it.

The shadows don’t feel so heavy anymore, and they all gradually stop looking in those shadows for Bruce. Instead, they see nothing but a shadow and a possible vantage point if needed. Not something that was going to breathe down their necks about their mistakes and how they could be doing better.

Tim starts being a full-time mentor to SDamian and takes him to the next mission of the Teen Titans.

Damian has calmed down a lot and has learned some of the joys of being a kid.

The mission was nothing world-shattering or extremely dangerous, but was something to show Damian how they worked as a team, and how working with a diverse team worked. He won’t be joining anytime soon, with him not being a teenager, but he confides in Tim later that he doesn’t want that responsibility right now. That he is still getting used to everything back in Gotham, and he isn’t ready for a complete change yet.

During the last couple of days of the mission he and Damian come across a crude version of the Cowl and Cape that Batman uses and Damian finds out about the whole Timestream issue because Tim actually tells him. Damian holds the cowl in his hands shaking with silent tears. Time is worried that Damian is going to want to bring Bruce back, but Damian asks what they can use to destroy it so that no one can find it.

They use one of the chemical acids on hand with the mission, and Damian can be found hugging Tim as Damian seems to come to terms with what is happening. When Tim later asks if Damian ever wanted to bring Bruce back, Damian answers with an honest no. He explains how he finally feels safe with everyone, and he felt like he was always being put under a microscope by his father.

He states that he might not have seen Tim as a brother if Bruce was still around, because Tim was Bruce’s Robin, but Tim was Dick’s brother which made them brothers.

Damian now has connections to outside heroes and has the beginning of a larger support system which is what he needed. People outside the family that he can trust.

Tim and Steph after months of getting professional help, working on themselves outside of each other, and a bit of maturing finally have their official start over. Not dating, but finally being people again without Bruce pushing the toxicity to a different level.

The first person that Tim tells about the whole situation, and not just letting the situation come up when it does is Helena, because he thinks she will give the most straightforward response on it.

Tim explains how everyone is doing so much better without Bruce, how Gotham has been doing so much better without Bruce, how he finally has a family, and things are finally starting to look up. How for the first time in a long time it feels like he isn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Helena lets Tim rant for a bit before stating that it sounded like Bruce wasn’t a good dad, that even though at points he might not have meant it, he was being abusive.

This is the moment where someone finally puts Bruce and abusive together and it just kind of clicks. Every wrong feeling, and every right feeling. The dread, and the holding breath and waiting for disaster.

It’s a growing moment, and Tim finally has the words to put to the feelings.

Helena lets the kid cry on her couch for a bit while she grades some papers, and when Tim eventually calms down he thanks Helena for sticking around because they all needed her, and it had just taken most of them far too long to realize that.

Helena promises not to talk about the Bruce situation until he knows that no one is a flight risk.

The next, and final person to find out was Dick.

Tim and Dick don’t work together all that often in a set-up pairing. Sure they worked well together, and they were close, it was just that time undercover and working with Steph that made it so there was a bit of separation between the two that didn’t exist until now.

They are working on a case that brought them to Australia where on the investigation they found a Batcave that Bruce had set up back in time. When Tim explains everything to Dick they both feel like they are walking on eggshells and are waiting for the other one to say something.

Dick then asks how many other clues Tim has found, and Tim confesses to the whole thing.

Dick is mad because he wanted to know why Tim didn’t tell him. Tim states that he didn’t know if Dick would bring Bruce back, and if everything that had become good would disappear. Dick exclaims that if anyone would understand it would be him, and sure in the beginning he would have wanted Bruce back, but he too knows how good things have been going.

So Dick ends up having the cave upgraded to a base parameters that had been set up and it is now a location that an international team can use as a base when needed.

When they all get back and meet up for a family meal they finally all hold a discussion about the situation, and they all come to the consensus that Bruce Wayne needs to be laid to rest, and it is time for the world to move on.

They talk about how they should go about the whole thing, and how it needs to be airtight and conclusive, but not so conclusive that it looks like a cover up.

In the end they decide on having him die from an accident while on one of his benders abroad. Doing some stupid stunt that would have been ill adviced, and there was already warnings of. Bruce would be labeled as another stupid rich man that didn’t listen to the warnings of those around him and would suffer the consequences of his actions.

The media would have a field day about it, the public wouldn’t question it, and the family could get by having odd reactions because they themselves would build up the trip and say things about how dangerous it was.

The plan goes off without a hitch. A couple of weeks before the planned date of death, Tim says some things to his friends, Dick is caught having a loud phone conversation, and the media tracks down the records that have been set up about the trip. Have a couple of convincing fake IDs, a few stand-in people for some pictures and nothing is suspicious at all.

Set the trip to last a couple of weeks, and have everything go normally except for some weird weather reports and some chatter from the area. Then when teh couple of weeks are over, and Bruce doesn’t show back up everyone starts getting antsy.

At that point have Tim get picked up early from school during the middle of the day when the press is already on edge, and have a teary moment of realization, and hock line and sinker.

Only one of the fake IDS makes it barely alive out of the trip and suddenly Bruce is dead on an ill-advised trip, and there is nobody to bring back, but have a funeral anyway.

During the funeral, they do actually cry, and not just for the press that is hounding their backs but because they are finally closing that chapter of their lives, and can properly move into something better.

Bruce is now dead to the world, and he is no longer a shadow hanging over everyone else.

In the will left behind, they find that a lot of the money was being donated to Wayne charities, with a significant amount still being put in personal accounts for Dick, Tim, Damian, and Cass. That the manor and all other Wayne properties were not to be sold.

They decide as a family that they can do more for Gotham than what Bruce was doing, and they start renovating a lot of the other properties for new housing, and public spaces that people could use. They open up new shelters for people that will be safe, and centres where people can take free classes to help them on the path to GEDs or training for skilled jobs.

They start putting Wayne's name behind people in the city government and making reforms on a city level.

Because yes busting up a frug trade and saving kidnap victims work, but it will only continue to happen if people are not given teh opportunities to move up in life.

The company goes international and starts making waves all around the world by helping many other people. It also serves as a source of information that they would not normally be able to get.

Everything is getting better.

Tim graduates high school, something that Tim hadn’t even thought he would do for the longest time. Not because he struggled with school, but compared to everything else that was going on it didn’t seem all that important. True he still didn’t see it as all that important, but he was learning to live his life. Something that he hadn’t been doing for a very long time.

Sure his grades would never recover from what the classes he missed, the switching of schools, and the effect that No Man’s Land has on someone’s schooling. So to say that Tim wasn’t going to be a Valedictorian was an understatement. However, he pulled through since things have been getting better and he had a decent report card now. Not that it would matter as Tim still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do after this, but it was nice to be a kid and just have to worry about grades and friends sometimes. Something he didn’t really allow himself to do.

It’s his graduation. The whole family, his friends, and other people who are important to him show up. When his name gets called he shakes hands with the principal and later throws his hat up into the sky, he can’t help but wish that Bruce was there to congratulate him. Wish that he was there to say how proud of him he was, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

He pushes aside the thought and goes to meet up with his family, his significant other, and his friends.

He takes pictures with multiple different groups of them as they all laugh. Afterwards, it's just the small family group as they make their way to a local family diner and have a good family meal together.

Two weeks down the line Jason shows up at one of the cases where multiple Bats are working and helps them with the information that he has collected.

This is the start of Jason coming back.

It is slow going, and for many of them they aren’t ready to forgive, but Bruce isn’t here to tell any of them that they are doing anything wrong, and because Bruce isn’t here they will all work together to get things done with this case.

The case takes a while, but Jason is slowly being folded back into the group.

During that time the manor is finally sold. None of them holds anything with the manor. The original was rebuilt from the quake, and they are ready to move on. The cave has been hidden away and cleaned of anything that would show people were there. The land is turned into a large nature area.

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn show up and they can now be found frequenting the area. It is the start of many green and nature building projects that will be soon put into effect around Gotham. Ones that soon start to change the communities for the better.

Tim and Jason don’t interact much. Mostly because Tim and his therapist have talked and he isn’t mentally ready for that yet, but also because things aren’t stable enough right now for things to go wrong.

However, they sometimes work together on larger cases, mostly with a third person to be the middle ground just in case something goes wrong. In one of these cases, they come across another thing Bruce has left behind in the Timestream. It’s Stephanie with them this time so he hopes that things don’t go too wrong.

Jason is mad at first, but they soon start having a discussion that is the most level-headed and emotional in a while. Jason comes to understand the situation and they become brothers.

Jason is the next one to hang up a mantle that was just prolonging his pain. Red Hood goes into the box, and a new vigilante can be seen on the streets.

It’s finally a whole family again. It isn’t perfect but they are growing closer and better with every passing day. It isn’t always a good day though.

There are still nights when they will wake up in the med bay, in their apartment, in a safe house, in the Belfry, in the main house. There are times when they wake up that they cry and look around for Bruce, for Batman. Whether it be as a threat or to look for any form of comfort.

Sometimes they cry into their hands, the sheets, a pillow, a stuffed animal, and the sleeves of their clothes, and just want things to go back to the way they were. Sometimes they remember that things could go back to the way they were. They know clues are out there waiting to be found.

But they soon calm down and know they don’t want to. That they have healed, grown, and become better people because of Bruce not being there. As hard as it can be to admit some days.

So they keep hiding the clues, keep doing family dinners, and inviting friends and their teams over, and Gotham is slowly healing too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Side Stories:

A side story on Stephanie and her growth into being the new Batgirl, becoming family with her mom again, interacting with the new normal, and growing up without toxic fathers and mentors holding her back.

A side story on Jason and what he was doing between the time he was finished with his Batman rampage, his coming back to the family, and his growth as a character and realizing that things are changing. Also Jason’s perspective on the announcement of Bruce Wayne’s death, and the final realization that Bruce won’t be coming back.

A side story on Damain and adapting to a new culture and place with people he slowly grows to see as family. It would focus on him learning to be a kid and learning to accept the grief he has for the family he won’t get to have, but also growing to love the family that he does have.

A side story on Cass, and her experiences with the grief of losing Bruce, her time in Hong Kong, and eventually coming back into the family. (I need to do more research before I decide what I want to do with Cass)

A side story on just the way that the media has been handling everything and the articles and news segments that have been coming out on the whole thing. This would focus more on how life in Gotham has changed from an outside perspective. It would cover some of the major events and even have some exclusive stuff like an interview or two that other characters did.

A side story on Cass and Helena finally having a talk about things when they are forced to team up during their separate cases/missions. Includes a lot of discussion on the morality of killing or letting someone be killed, and the legacy of the Batgirl that was not meant to be and the Batgirl that was chosen to be.

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