Earth-349: Batwoman
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.
Disclaimer
#1 This story is set in a hypothetical
parallel world within the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman
#349, but not limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer
#2 Some characters appearing in this
story are based on copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel
Comics and others. Their use here is
not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer
#3 This story is not recommended for
persons under 18 or the easily offended.
The guy in the Gotham Knights T-shirt
stepped over his unconscious buddy with hardly a hesitation. He hefted his billy club and grinned at
Robin.
"I'll let you in on a little secret,
kid. I'm the one who did Batbitch. And I'm gonna do to Batbitch Boy what I did
to her, and I don't mean just the part where I broke her knees."
The Boy Wonder grinned back, showing
considerably more teeth.
"Oh, you're gonna do what you did when
you met Batwoman, are you? I hope
you're wearing rubber pants this time."
The guy's grin just got wider, and he
tightened his grip on his club. He took
a step forward, there was a flash of yellow, and he was clutching at his
stinging, empty hand. He looked up in
time to see the boy coming at him, a swirl of bright colors in midair, and then
he was on the floor, his body immobilized by pain, the boy's booted feet
pressing the last air from his lungs.
Robin reached up and snatched the spinning
club from the air. He leaned down and
prodded the thug between the buttocks with his own weapon.
"Wanna tell me again what you were
going to do to me?"
"Aw, man, aw, maaan!"
Robin bound the man's wrists and ankles with
green zip ties, tucked the club down the back of his pants, retrieved his
throwing disk from a corner and left the building, making sure to trip the
alarm on his way out.
As he stepped into the alley, he froze, then
smiled and opened his mouth to speak as he recognized the silhouette looming
above him.
A black-gloved hand shot out a warning
finger, then pointed upward. Robin
nodded and watched the cloaked figure of Batwoman climb the building's fire
escape. He followed, wincing as he
noted that her ascent was nearly silent, and his was not.
He reached the roof in time to see Batwoman
crossing to an adjoining building. He
caught up with her two blocks away, on the roof of the tallest building in the
neighborhood. She was waiting in
silence while he crossed the tar beach quietly, but puffing with exertion.
"Mask," she hissed, the first word
he'd heard from her.
Robin obeyed, untying the thong which held
his green domino in place.
"My name is Dick --"
"Gordon, I know. Son of Police Commissioner Gordon, brother
of Barbara Gordon alias Batgirl."
"Um, yes."
After a moment's pause, Batwoman pushed her
long-eared cowl up and off her face.
Dick took in the woman's tight mouth and
watchful blue eyes. With her face set
with such grim intensity, her hair matted and sweaty, without makeup or
earrings, it was difficult to recognize her as --
"Roberta Wayne? You were my number two choice for Batwoman,
after Kathleen Kane."
Something happened to the thin line of
Batwoman's mouth.
"Second out of how many?"
"Five.
Barbara had seven candidates.
You were her first."
The something turned into a smile for a
fraction of a second.
"Listen, Batwoman -- Ms. Wayne -- I'm
so glad to meet you, so glad to know that you're . . . ."
"Not dead?"
"Or crippled, or captive. I hope you're going to let everyone know
you're back. A lot of people in Gotham
really admire you."
"Yes, I know. I've been watching developments over the last year. It's been very flattering to see just how
many people have been pinch hitting for me: you, your sister, Anarky,
Nightwing, the Creeper."
Dick winced inwardly at being classed with
the other vigilantes. He considered
some of them to be little better than criminals themselves. He said nothing, deferring to Batwoman's
judgment.
"But now that you're back," he
forced himself to begin.
"You're afraid I'll tell you to cut it
out."
This time Dick winced visibly, but Batwoman
shook her head.
"Not exactly. What I want you to do is stop acting on your own."
She pulled a sliver of blackness from a
pouch in her utility belt. It unfolded
silently into a scalloped bat-shape.
She tossed it with a seemingly negligent throw. It circled around them and she snatched it
from the air without looking.
"I have equipment you could never
afford on lunch money or whatever you're using for a budget. I have experience and training you don't. I want you to accept me as your teacher,
your sponsor and your commanding officer."
Dick's jaw dropped.
"That . . . that would be . . .
everything I could have hoped for. I .
. . .
"Are you making this same offer to all
the others?"
Wayne shook her head.
"No, just you. And Barbara, since she's so close to
you. You're something special,
Dick. I've been watching. You've got talent, intelligence, courage and
good morals. I admired the way you
handled yourself with Crazy-Quilt. You
could have killed her easily, but you didn't."
Dick shrugged, embarrassed.
"I didn't have to."
"There's another reason you're a
special case, though. One you deserve
to know.
"One night, some seventeen years ago .
. . ."
Thomas Wayne had taken a train to Star City for a meeting that
morning. Martha Wayne had spent seven
hours in surgery. They were both more
than ready for bed by the time the movie let out. Their daughter, on the other hand, was still full of energy,
among other things, zigzagging up and down the block, covering three times as
much ground as her parents on the way home.
The movie had been exciting, to say nothing of the cartoons, but what
had really revved her motor had been the first chapter of a new serial, Zorro's
Black Whip. Swinging in a tight
circle around a lamppost, she gushed at the tired couple.
"Did you see her? A girl being Zorro! That is so swell! And did you see how she --"
Roberta's orbit of the lamppost halted
abruptly as she took in the man who stood in the middle of the sidewalk before
the Waynes, a pistol aimed directly at Roberta.
"In the alley," he snarled,
gesturing with the gun.
Roberta Wayne was to remember that move many
times in the years to come. Using a gun
as a pointer was a sloppy, amateurish act.
It was probably what inspired Thomas Wayne to try to disarm the man.
Wayne calmly ushered his wife and daughter
before him into the alley, and as he passed the hoodlum, made a sudden grab for
the gun. They struggled over it for a
moment, and it fired.
Thomas Wayne stepped back, eyes wide, mouth
open, his hands moving only gradually to cover the bleeding hole at the crotch
of his pants.
Wayne fell against a wall, mouth working as
though he were trying to force out a scream, though he made no sound.
"Brought it on yourself, asshole,"
the thug said, amused. He put the
muzzle of his gun to Thomas Wayne's forehead and fired again.
The man turned towards Martha Wayne, and his
malicious smile turned to a look of utter disgust. Dr. Wayne was lying in the alley, her slackening hands falling
away from her chest, obviously dead.
"Shit, I was lookin' forward to having
some fun with that one."
He looked at the last of the Waynes and
shrugged.
"A little young, but I guess you'll
do."
With no more word than that, he approached
Roberta Wayne. She had already backed
into a doorway as far as she could go, and merely stood, frozen, as the killer
pushed up her pleated plaid skirt and pulled her white cotton briefs down to
her saddle shoes.
She said nothing. In fact, it was three days before she spoke to anyone.
Dick Gordon looked out over the rooftops,
shaking his head.
"Oh, God. I knew it had to have been something . . . major that led you to
become Batwoman, but I never, well . . . ."
"They found me in the alley an hour
later, sitting beside the bodies. Our
butler was there almost at once, fortunately for me. He took charge of me, moved me from the downtown penthouse to our
old place outside the city. I was
beginning to recover when we realized I was pregnant."
Dick turned back to her, gaping.
"Then you must have . . . ."
"No, we didn't. The following March, a month after my
fourteenth birthday, I gave birth to a healthy boy. With my butler's help, I arranged for him to be adopted by
friends of my parents who already had a child."
"In March, seventeen -- no, sixteen --
years ago?"
"On the Ninth."
Dick's mouth slowly formed the word,
"Mother?"
"No.
Ellen's your mother. And Jim's
your father, not . . . that man."
"Yes, of course, but . . . ."
"I gave birth to you, yes. I've watched you grow up, taken as much
pride as I thought I deserved in your accomplishments. And when I figured out that you and Barbara
were Batgirl and Robin, it was the happiest day of my life."
She stared into the night, shook herself and
spoke again.
"There's more, though.
"A year ago, I became engaged to Harvey
Dent."
Dick remembered that. They had seemed an odd couple, the
all-business District Attorney and the madcap millionairess. Now he saw just how much they'd had in
common.
"Harvey was trying to convince me to
give up being Batwoman after we were married.
He had me about half convinced to do it. Also about half-convinced to break it off with him.
"Then I was captured by the Joker and
placed in a deathtrap. Must have been
the sixth or seventh time. But that
time was different. Once he had me
stripped naked and tied to the frame, he raped me.
"I escaped, of course. The deathtrap, anyway.
"Afterwards, I told Harvey the truth
about what had happened. I told myself
it wouldn't be right to hide it from him, but maybe I was testing him, or
trying to drive him away.
"He was a very old-fashioned man in
some respects. We had been planning to
wait until our wedding night to have sex, but now he said he wanted to
consummate our relationship then and there.
Maybe he wanted to stake his claim on me. Maybe he wanted to confuse the possible issue of paternity.
"It was the third time in my life. The first time with a man I loved, or even
one I didn't hate.
"Well, you know what happened to Harvey
about two weeks after that.
"I don't know when I'll feel up to
telling my daughter she can take her pick of daddies: the Joker or
Two-Face."
Dick lifted his head. Roberta frowned at the tears flowing freely
down his face.
"Daughter?"
"Born a month ago, during my six-month
'round the world cruise'. Next week
I'll formally adopt her, the child of an anonymous birth mother.
"That's another reason I want a close
relationship with you as my pupil. At
fourteen I wasn't capable of being a mother to you; I don't want to give Delia
up, or let her grow up while I'm busy.
I need someone I can trust to share Batwoman's burden while I'm raising
her."
She drew something else from her utility
belt.
"Here, put this on."
Dick unrolled the tiny black object into a
domino mask that felt slightly sticky on one side. Smoothed against his skin, it stayed in place until Roberta
showed him how to pinch it up at one corner.
"Something one of my scientists at
Tyler Chemical came up with. Consider
it the first installment of your new equipment."
Roberta pulled her cowl back over her face,
unlimbered her grapnel and scanned the neighboring buildings, considering where
to direct it.
"Think it over, talk about it with
Barbara. Call me at the Wayne
Foundation, leave a message about 'the project we discussed on Friday'."
"Well, okay, but I'm pretty sure Babs'
answer will be the same as mine. I
can't tell you how good it feels to have your support, your approval, to know
that what we've been doing is the right thing."
Batwoman fired her grapnel at a distant
cornice. She looked over her shoulder
at Robin.
"I wish I knew that."
Dick watched her swing away into the night.
More
Earth-349 stories can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earth349
Contact
the author at doctor_p99@hotmail.com