Chapter Text
“So like, what are you gonna do?” Stephanie asked, leaning over the back of the living room couch that Terry was halfway in the process of sliding off of. They’d previously been lying on it normally, but then Duke had come over and shoved their head aside to make room for his butt, which Terry had apparently been too tired to correct because they were currently letting gravity run its slow course on them.
“Hm?” Terry distractedly intoned as their back hit the floor.
“I mean, you’re stuck here- a whole different dimension that’s also set in the past- for a week minimum. Don’t you wanna, I dunno, go sightseeing? Shopping? Leave notes for your potential future self? Create an international scandal then disappear without a trace forever?”
“No international scandals,” Bruce called from down the hallway. Stephanie scowled. Either the dude had freakish hearing or had bugged one of them. She had tested the hearing thing multiple times, so it was probably a bug. Probably.
“Local scandals, then,” suggested Tim from where he sat in front of the DVD collection trying to find a movie that was unique to their dimension to show Terry. “Become an urban legend. Like a ghost or something.”
“Or a conspiracy theory. I can personally vouch for that one. It’s a riot,” said Jason as he showcased the streamable movies they had available while trying to shove Damian out of his favorite armchair.
“Ooh, yeah, that would be fun!” Steph cooed. “Should we go for like, an Illuminati angle? Or a creepypasta? Or maybe-”
“No public scandals!” Bruce called again.
Steph rolled her eyes. Killjoy.
“So?” she said, making sure to keep her volume at a whisper and giving Terry’s calf (which was now one of their only body parts on the couch) a poke. “You down for any of those options?”
“Uhh,” they said, then lapsed into silence for long enough that Steph felt the need to circle round to the front of the couch and check that they were still awake.
Their eyes were open, but only just.
“Hey, what about this? Fitting, don’t you think?” said Dick, who had also been skimming the DVDs with Tim, and was now holding up a copy of what appeared to be Back To The Future: The Musical. Huh. Steph hadn’t even known that existed.
Suddenly, Terry’s eyes shot wide open before they lurched upright and started patting away at the pockets of their borrowed pajama pants for something. After a minute of scrambling, they triumphantly held up a datastick with a wicked gleam in their eye that was, apparently, multi-universal.
“This,” they said, with the kind of conviction to make Steph believe whatever was on that stick was worth more than its weight in gold. “Is what we’re gonna watch. I keep it on me at all times. It’s perfect.”
Cass hopped over and took the stick, ferrying it to Barbara, who plugged it into her laptop and set it to project onto the TV screen.
“Any hints?” Dick asked as the scene opened on a shot of thick grey fog.
Terry just smirked.
The fog thinned, the outline of a familiar caped figure could be seen, and a low, bombastic voice said, “I am vengeance. I am the night. I am…”
Then the harmony kicked in.
And everyone in the room felt their jaws drop.
Only when the first song had faded into a recording of raucous audience applause did Steph find the strength to turn away from the beautiful, professional, Broadway quality masterpiece before her and meet Terry’s eye- though tears of pure joy obstructed her own gaze.
“I took Bruce to see this live for his eightieth,” they confessed, grinning in a way that she usually only saw on supervillains.
“You’re f*cking evil. Please never leave,” was the only response she could think to make.
--
“Terrence, are you dead?” Damian asked, poking his elseworlds sibling with his toe. He had watched the fool stumble into a door frame, fall face-first onto the ground, and just… stay there. That had been three whole minutes ago. The others didn’t seem very concerned, but Damian was still very conscious of the fact that McGinnis could still be suffering adverse side effects that they weren’t aware of yet. Poison was not entirely off the table.
“Why would you assume my name is Terrence?” came their muffled reply.
“Is it not?”
“Like, not everyone named Max is actually Maxamillion, y’know?”
“Fine, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s kind of a weird assumption to make.”
“Okay, I get it. Just answer the question.”
“No, I’m not dead.”
“I mean-” realizing he was arguing with someone half passed-out on the floor, Damian glared and turned them right-side up with his foot. “I mean is your full name Terrence or not?”
“Oh yeah it totally is,” they said airily, draping an arm over their eyes to block the dim living room lights. Damian resisted the urge to kick their exposed gut.
“How one such as you was ever deemed trained enough to enter their field as Batman is beyond me,” he snapped, looming over McGinnis and wondering how hard he could get away with ‘accidentally’ clipping them as he walked past.
“Wait…” they mumbled, sliding their arm off their eye just enough to be visible. “You guys got training?”
Damian froze. The room fell silent. Someone in the back made a squeak of distress.
“You… you didn’t?” Richard asked, voice strained enough to match a cheesecloth.
“Uhh, I was kinda in a hurry at the start. I got some after, though,” McGinnis explained, craning their neck at an uncomfortable angle to meet the gazes around the room. “Why, what did you all do?”
“I was trained from birth,” Cassandra said.
“Me too,” Damian said.
“I got months of intense training before I went out,” Todd said.
“Same here,” said Drake.
“I took ballet and martial arts classes for years,” said Gordon.
“I was a professional acrobat and got Bruce training,” said Richard.
“I took some self-defense things and then got Bruceified,” Brown said.
“I got Bruceified too, but before that I led a vigilante youth gang of Robins,” said Thomas.
“Oh now that’s schway,” McGinnis said, raising a hand to make a half-hearted attempt at fist-bumping Thomas. They both missed horribly. “Yeah I had like, an hour tops between deciding to do the whole Batman thing and then actually doing the whole Batman thing. It was a bit haphazard.”
“Was your first mission at least, like, chill?” Richard asked in a tone that betrayed how little hope he had for a positive answer to that question.
“I stopped a rich CEO guy from selling nerve gas.”
“Discreetly?”
“Well- if by ‘discrete’ you mean ‘blowing a hover-freighter up’ then yeah! Very discreet.”
”Kid… how are you still alive?”
“Reckless abandon and the favor of god,” they said, shooting Richard a playful wink and finger guns- the effect of which was partially ruined because the finger guns were upside-down and they were still lying sprawled in the doorway.
Richard looked torn between screaming and combusting.
“It was fine, I promise. And don’t blame it on Bruce, it wasn’t his idea,” McGinnis said, waving a hand as if to dispel the worry in the room.
“And what did he have to say about it?” asked Richard, sounding very prone to blaming the other Bruce anyways.
“Well, beforehand he was like ‘get off my property, you strange child,’ then afterwards he was like ‘give me back my property, you strange child,’ and we kinda just went from there.”
“Wait, how the- you didn’t even know father before becoming Batman?” Damian blurted, unable to contain his sheer disbelief and annoyance.
“Nah we met, like, once before that.”
“And then in your second encounter you became Batman?” Damian demanded, trying to communicate through his glare how he felt about that.
“Yeah, pretty much. It was a very ‘heat of the moment’ kind of deal. Haphazard, as I said before,” McGinnis replied, meeting his glare unphased.
No, not just unphased, but with a self-satisfied smirk dancing across their features.
Damian’s foot collided with their gut.
“Ow! You little twip!” McGinnis cried (with more mirth than offense, for some unknowable reason) grabbing ahold of his foot enough to only yank off the sock when Damian wrestled his appendage away.
“Yo, none of that,” Thomas scolded, pulling Damian back by the shoulder as he jerked to dodge the sock thrown back at him.
“Tt- if they’re well enough to mock me they’re well enough to take a hit,” scoffed Damian. McGinnis made an embarrassingly childish gesture with their tongue. “See?”
“At least I’m not throwing a hissy fit over someone being shwayer than me,” they taunted.
“At least I didn’t lose a fight with a door frame,” he shot back.
“At least I’m not three-foot two- ow!”
Being unceremoniously picked up and thrown on the couch by Thomas was worth getting to kick McGinnis again.
“Someone needs some Bat-therapy,” McGinnis quipped.
“Yeah, you,” Damian retorted.
“Pass. My last therapist brainwashed and tried to kill me.”
“Bat-f,” Thomas said.
“Bat-f?” McGinnis echoed.
“Bat-f-in-the-chat. Like the Batmobile. It’s Dickie approved.”
“Okay, I understood none of those words together. What?”
“Y’know, like, how there’s Batarangs and the Batplane?”
“Yeah.”
“Well Dick started that and now we’re applying it to modern lingo that expresses sorrow.”
“Wait, Dick started-” they turned (still on the floor) to face Richard. “-you’re the reason we have Bat-everythings?”
“Yeah, did you not- wait. Wait, oh my g-d. Did you think Bruce came up with that naming scheme?” cried Richard, shocked in a very different way now.
“I dunno, I just figured he was weird like that!” replied an indignant McGinnis when the room erupted into laughter. “He’s got a messed up sense of humor and likes his theming, I think it’s a fair assumption!”
“I mean, they’re not wrong,” Drake offered diplomatically once the noise had died down.
“This is what he gets for not telling me anything,” McGinnis grumbled, finally finding enough resolve to make a pathetic attempt at getting up. Pathetic because they immediately abandoned ship and flopped back down with a dramatic groan as soon as they had to engage their core muscles.
“You okay there, buddy?” Drake chuckled.
“I’m hungry but I don’t wanna get up,” they whined, using one foot to slowly scoot themselves into alignment with the door like a lazy otter.
“Don’t worry, fair citizen, I’ve got you!” declared Cassandra in a voice imitating the lead of the horrid musical they had just watched but Damian would not name. She leapt over the couch and stopped above McGinnis to pose with a blanket for a cape.
“Oh, Batman! I’m so glad you’re here!” McGinnis giggled stupidly. “I’m in such peril! Could you- oh? Okay? Alright,” they said as Cassandra scooped them off the floor and into her arms. “We’re doing this then?”
“You’re light, don’t worry,” Cassandra said.
“Schway.”
“Now, where to, my helpless charge?”
“To the kitchen! I’ll simply die if I don’t get any food.”
“Well we can’t have that, can we? Robin!”
“Yes, Batman?” Brown cried in a grating impression of another unnamable musical character, snatching Todd’s hoodie to use as a cape and coming to a stop beside her.
“Quick! We must escort this poor miscreant to the refectory!”
“Of course, Batman!”
And then they were off, singing one of those awful songs all the way down.
--
Terry was having a… Well, not a bad time, per say, but definitely not an ideal time. At the same time they were also having a good time, so it was more of a bad-good time. They were plenty used to having bad-good times though. They could deal with it. Except for… okay so, as long as they compartmentalized they could deal with it. But other than that they were completely fine.
Being woken to water, whipped cream, not-Ace and a whole cave full of strangers in a strange dimension was probably the rudest awakening Terry had ever gotten- and they had fallen asleep in class an embarrassing amount of times. As soon as they were aware enough, they had started running the usual tests. Sonar, heat, and hard light scans were run over and over again using the suit plus their own senses. Anytime they were alone they tried all sorts of reality tests. They didn’t have to fake being tired, but it did make for a convenient excuse to be closing their eyes all the time and checking to make sure that what they heard matched what they saw and felt. After a few hours of that, they had to conclude that if this was an illusion, it was the most thorough illusion they had ever encountered. Even Spellbinder’s most immersive VR setups were always slightly out of sync with your senses.
Then of course, just as they had accepted that this was reality, the DNA thing had gone and thrown a whole new wrench in that idea. Maybe this was some magical illusion that they had no chance of breaking. Maybe Spellbinder’s tech had improved. Maybe Terry had fallen asleep and woken up in one of the man’s weird pods that showed you everything you wanted to see- like Max had. Why else would they be in a world where Bruce was healthy and doing what he loved? A world where Mayor Gordon wasn’t cold and bitter, Mr. Pennyworth was alive, Mr. Drake never had to deal with the Joker's torment, and Mr. Grayson was speaking to him? A world where he’d had a kid with the woman he loved, and gotten to take in all these other young people who were probably figures from Bruce’s past that he missed sorely and just hadn't mentioned. Granted, that last part seemed to stretch the theory a little. How would Duke, Jason, Cassandra and Stephanie be a part of Terry’s utopian delusion if they had never heard of them? It was that point which they clung to when determining what was going on, but their shaky confidence was shattered when the paternal test came back positive.
That one felt like a really low blow. Like Spellbinder was mocking them by making this other Bruce so welcoming and now their literal father. It stung. If it wasn’t real, then that meant confronting the part of their subconscious that apparently really wanted for… this to be a thing. That part of them was so desperate as to forsake their real dad so soon. If this was real- if Bruce really was their biological father- then that meant both dealing with the question of “how” and with the fact that Bruce had kept a secret from them again. A secret that wasn’t even his to keep! Terry couldn’t decide which option was worse, and that made them feel like even more of a dreg. They weren’t proud to say that they panicked. Reverting back to the stupid kid who lashed out at everyone. This other Bruce had just been worried, but Terry had gone and blown up on him. It had felt good to get it all out, but when they’d stormed out of the medbay and remembered that there was an audience- a whole cave full of people who quickly turned and tried to act as if they hadn’t been listening to every word- they felt even worse than before.
When they had gone upstairs they had half-heartedly been planning to ditch the manor grounds all together to try and find something, but catching sight of the garden had given them pause. They had never seen it looking this, well, nice. Sure, in the future some of the plants were still there, but most of the non-native species had died out, and half the others had been smothered by the tangle of rose bushes that dominated a whole sector of the garden and manor wall. This lot wasn’t like that. It was neat and trimmed, with clean rows of flowers, herbs and whatever else people put in gardens. Terry had seen it and decided that if anything were to break an illusion of their own creation, it would be a highly detailed bed of plant life. They didn’t know the first thing about marigolds.
That’s where Duke had found them a few minutes later. Dressed in borrowed pajamas, wallowing in the nicest garden they had ever seen, trying to hide the remnants of their tears and alternating between wishing this was real and wishing it wasn’t. Talking with Duke had been… grounding. During the pauses in their conversation, Terry tried to imagine what he would say next. Tried to will their most desired outcome into existence. The Duke in their head would say that the tests were a sham, the portal was ready to go now, no one in the cave had heard their meltdown, and that Mr. Pennyworth had a batch of their favorite yakgwa ready to go. The Duke in front of them asked if they were okay, said he related to their experience, and assured them that they would be supported while they were here. It wasn’t what Terry wanted to hear at all, yet it did more to lift the weight off their shoulders than anything they would have imagined, or desired.
And it was the point where the trip turned from a bad-good time into a good-bad time, much to the chagrin of every Bruce in the multiverse, probably.
--
“Okay so your Gotham is pretty much totally remodeled, then?” Tim asked Terry at breakfast the morning after their arrival.
“There’s a historic district, but that only exists because Wayne Enterprises poured a lot of money into it. It’s probably the only part of the old town that still gets sunlight. Most other brick and mortar places are buried in the low levs or just straight up buried.”
“Wild. So is it kinda like Coruscant?”
“Yeah. Not as big, but yeah.”
Tim started doing his staring-off-into-the-middle-distance thing that Terry couldn’t tell if it was due to thought or drowsiness, so they refocused on Mr. Pennyworth’s heavenly homemade jam and toast.
Steph- who alongside Jason had decided to join the manor’s usual residents for the time being to have a front seat view of the inter-dimensional drama- suddenly seized Terry by the wrist.
“Oh my g-d you’ve never been to Little Moo Moo’s,” she said, with the gravity of a civil war era doctor delivering the news of an impending amputation.
“No,” Terry agreed slowly. “But if you’re going to explain what that means, could you please let go of me first? I’m trying to munch some toast here, comrade.”
“Oh, sorry comrade,” she said before turning to Tim and seizing his wrist. “Timster, babe, are you doing anything today?”
“Hm?” hummed Tim, being shaken out of his reverie. “Uh, no I’m free.”
“Great. Duke? Cass? Dami?”
Affirmations came from all addressed.
“Sweet!” she cried, clapping her hands together decisively. “Okay, Ter, how ‘schway’ does being given a guided tour around the past sound to you?”
“Pretty ‘yeet’ as you old folks might put it,” they replied, half-certain they were using that word incorrectly and relishing the simultaneous cringe their companions felt.
“That’s not- you know what? Whatever. You’re getting a guided tour,” Steph declared with a distinct undertone of long-suffering (which Terry considered unwarranted- considering the general vibes she had given off in the less than twenty-four hours they had known her), and thus began the trip.
The first area they visited was the one that would become the historic district in Terry’s future as a way to anchor themselves. Aside from it being all new and (relatively) clean, the most pressing difference they noticed was how exposed they felt. It was a deeply unsettling feeling, like the lack of humongous buildings on all sides left them vulnerable to attack, even though a skyscraper would do nothing to stop, say, a radioactive glowing man with a hatred for poor people from punching them in the face. It wasn’t as bad as standing in the icy expanse outside Superman’s Fortress of Solitude had been, but it was still strange to see that old theater of Bruce’s not dwarfed on all sides and still standing in decent un-Shriek-ed condition.
From there they made a circuit, using a map to cross-reference Terry’s knowledge of the city with everyone else’s and swapping stories along the way. They visited the neighborhoods Duke and Steph grew up in and Terry pointed out the area that would later turn into their own. Tim had further questions about how Neo Gotham functioned, and Cass was interested to hear how much the East Asian influence would grow in the city- regaling them with stories of her stay in Hong Kong in return. Damian was mostly content to let the others take care of the narration, but would chime in every now and again with a fact or piece of banter that Terry would return. The kid was a major twip, but fun to mess with in the same way Bruce was. It wasn’t obvious from looks, but in attitude he was Wayne’s son through and through. Terry didn’t know how to address their apparent relation, and it seemed like Damian didn’t either from the way he carefully sidestepped any hints of that conversation, which was fine by them- even if his preferred method of avoidance seemed to be increasingly twippish insults. It was annoying, but again, Damian was a lot like Bruce personality wise, so Terry didn’t retaliate right away (though they thought about ruffling his hair). Sometimes it was best to bide one’s time for the perfect opportunity.
Said opportunity presented itself when they were walking through a strip mall to get Little Moo Moo’s for lunch and Terry spotted a certain item in the indie fashion boutique that was sure to tick the squirt off. Insults to pride were like kryptonite to people like Damian, and they couldn’t think of anything more insulting than a cutesy little bat-winged child’s backpack that- get this- had a leash attached to it.
Terry threw out a hand to stop Duke dead in his tracks. At his alarmed look they pointed silently towards the display window. Understanding instantly dawned in his eyes and he made a quick gesture for them to catch up with the others while he got the bag to avoid suspicion. Thus, thanks to the dreamwork of teamwork, between walking into the cafe to order and walking out to take one of the outdoor tables, Terry miraculously gained the ultimate fashion accessory. It went unnoticed by the others until they all stood to leave and Damian made a face like he’d just been asked to take care of an eggbaby. He turned quickly as if to pretend he hadn’t seen it, but then Cass let out a delighted gasp.
“Oh that’s amazing!’ she cried, leaning closer to inspect it in all of its twelve-inch glory.
“Holy banana cakes, Batman- it is!” agreed Steph, grabbing hold of the leash (which also had a little bat on it) and giving it an experimental tug. “We’ll never have to worry about you accidentally stepping into another portal now!”
“You should name it,” suggested Cass, whose smile seemed innocent enough but whose eyes glinted when she glanced towards Damian. “Any ideas, my sweet baby brother?”
“No,” snapped Damian, looking affronted to even be addressed in this discussion. “Cassandra, don’t encourage this charlatan to-”
“I was thinking of calling it the Batpack.”
Damian's expression suddenly gained the quality of that of a man on the chopping block. He made a valiant attempt at protest, but it was too late. The Batpack stayed. During the rest of their tour, while they were shopping for Terry’s ‘sorry for disappearing off the face of the earth’ presents for their family, and while navigating the transit back to the manor, it stayed on. The boy’s mortification was worsened by the fact that Tim, Steph, Duke and Cass would take turns holding the leash and playing up a bit where Terry would get lost if someone let go. It came as a surprise to absolutely no one when Damian ditched them to take a different route back, and the image of the disgruntled tween was a true source of comfort to Terry when they laid down to nap later that afternoon.
--
Though most of the trip consisted of playing tourist or napping, the prospect of going out on patrol with everyone proved to be too tempting of an offer to sleep through. So, after the sun had set on the second day of their stay and the bat colony had flown out, Terry was paired up with Cass and Steph for their first ever (non-Neo) Gotham patrol.
“You remember your way around?” Steph- or more accurately: Spoiler- asked as they climbed up on the bike behind her.
“Only as much as I remember g-lev in general,” Terry answered.
“Makes sense,” she said, revving the engine and kicking off with Cass (also known as Black Bat) not far behind. “Maybe it’ll look more familiar to you now that it’s dark.”
“Yeah,” they agreed just as Ms. “I’m no mayor yet, kid,” Gordon’s voice came over the comms to give a rundown of their route for the night.
“Pretty standard,” said Cass once the debrief was over. “Spoiler, you know what that means?”
“Yup!” replied Steph, flashing a thumbs up.
“What? What does it mean?” Terry asked.
“Well, what do you do on your slow nights?”
“Uh, do homework? Have an existential crisis? Annoy B? Not in that order.”
“...”
“...”
“What?”
“Yeeeah- we’re just gonna stick to annoying B.”
“That’s fair.”
Steph and Cass parked their bikes in a secure location and led Terry to the rooftops where they shot their grapples and leapt off the edge with a whoop. Terry- having already decided to conserve fuel for the time being- shot their own line and followed suit. The night quickly became half actual patrolling and half guided tour 2.0 Lights Off Edition. Tall (by twenties Gotham standards) buildings were scaled, muggings were stopped and cop cars were stolen. At one point Damian started to complain over comms about their group’s “overly jovial” behavior, but Terry was ready to shut him down with the classic “One hundred.”
“-what?” Damian grumbled, petulant in the way that only twips could be. “What is the meaning of that, McG-”
“Three hundred. No names in the field.”
“Well it’s not like I have anything else to call you-”
“Yes you do~” Terry called, grin evident in their voice.
“No I don’t.”
“Do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t.”
“Do- no! No I don’t! Tricking me into saying things means nothing!”
“It does in my book! You admit to knowing my codename, so now you have to say it!”
“Enough, you two,” Bruce cut in.
“Sorry, did you all hear something?” Terry asked, heart warmed by the inaudible sigh they knew the man must be letting out at this point. “I don’t know about you, Spoiler, but I only accept commands from old rich guys who pay me. Speaking of, Robin, you're up to eight hundred.”
“Ooh, you charge rates? I should start charging rates! Good call, Draculaura!” cried Steph, eyes sparkling while Damian spluttered.
“Draculaura?” muttered someone else.
“I’ll explain later,” Steph replied breezily, shooting Terry a conspiratorial wink at them before catching sight of someone slumped over on the sidewalk and grappling down to continue the never-ending mission of community aid.
--
‘The thing about remaining all aloof and mysterious,’ Duke mused as he “peeked” around the corner to watch a group of disturbed and confused non-Gothamite heroes speculating amongst themselves about the strange Bat-happenings that had occurred over the past week. ‘Is that you tend to leave a lot up to the imagination.’
Through his refracted vision, he saw Hal Jordan animatedly miming a certain famous undead figure closely associated with bats and let out a quiet snort.
Cass met his eye and made a questioning head nod towards their dimension-hopping sibling. He made a subtle motion of confirmation and repressed a triumphant smile. Bruce would definitely be done with them when he found out, but it hadn’t even been intentional! At least, not at first it hadn’t. Besides, he had been the one to get them in the habit of giving dramatically vague answers to questions, so if there was anyone to blame here, it would be the original caped crusader himself. He preferred to let people fill in the blanks with their own assumptions, and this is where it had led.
It had all started the day Terry showed up…
--
That first evening, Bruce had taken Terry over to the Watchtower- ostensibly to learn how to calibrate the dimensional portal, but Duke suspected that he also just wanted to stem the tide of destruction they had wrought to his already fragile place as “respected” head of the family in just a few short hours. He had purposely waited until nightfall, too, so that he could use the excuse of shooing everyone away to patrol. That tactic couldn’t work on the day shift though, so Duke had tagged along unhindered despite his father’s best efforts.
Terry, not wanting to get back in their suit, had just slapped on borrowed boots and a domino mask and trailed after Bruce, eager to get home and curious to see the Watchtower- which apparently had existed in their universe, but been decommissioned before they had been born. Duke had followed suit (with his suit on), dragging Terry off to play tourist once the calculations were input and Bruce went to work on some League duties. He had shown them to the trophy hall, to the space viewing port, and then to the library, keeping up a running commentary the whole time about the significance of certain objects, the profiles of various superheroes, the history of the Justice League and, of course, the latest hot gossip.
It had been Terry’s idea to head to the library. “We can play spot the difference but with life,” they had said. When the pair reached the room, they found a couple of young Kryptonians lounging on the couches there.
“Hey, Signal!” called Kon, motioning them over. “Hey, uh, new person! What’s up?”
“Not much,” Duke called back while Terry waved.
“Hi, I’m Superboy! Well, kind of. Kon’s also Superboy, but he said we can share until I’m old enough to be Superboy on my own. I’m in training,” said Jon, floating right up to them enthusiastically. “What’s your name?”
“Hi, Miniman, I’m-” Terry stopped and turned to Duke. “Actually, how are we doing this? Are we going by names or what? I’m fine with whatever. It’s your place so…”
“Good question,” said Duke, pausing to consider how much leeway he could get with codenames. “B’s already doing his thing, so you could go by… Bat…”
“If you say ‘Batboy’ I swear to g-d.”
“Piss me off and I will, but I’m not feeling that cruel just now,” he said half-seriously. “How about just… Bat.”
“Just Bat?”
“Look, we found you asleep in a cave, okay? That’s what bats do!”
“Yeah, but aren’t there like a thousand of you? In my day that’d be fine but here it’s gonna get confusing!”
“Okay, okay, fine,” he huffed, desperately trying to wrack his brain for a better option, but it was no good. All he could think of were Bram Stoker references. “...What about Dracula?”
Terry just glared.
“Superboy, since Mr. Fire Hydrant over here seems to be as bad at names as the rest of the family, what do you think I should be called?” they then asked, turning to Jon in a deliberate snub.
“Oh! Um,” Jon spluttered, shooting an uncertain glance at Kon, who just shrugged. “Maybe, uh… Draculaura?”
“Who?” Terry asked, taken aback.
“From Monster High,” Jon replied, getting a little flushed in the face.
Duke, taking mercy on the boy, took out his phone and pulled up a picture of the young vampire in question.
“Oh heck yeah,” said Terry upon laying eyes on the visage of the fabulous daughter of Dracula herself. “You can all address me as Draculaura- does she have a last name?”
“Not canonically, no.”
“Okay, well, Draculaura works, then,” they declared as Duke snickered at the thought of the face Bruce would make.
“Cool!” said Kon, scooting over to make room for Duke to jump on the couch. “Are you like, a hero, or just visiting?”
“I’m just visiting,” Terry said, shoving Duke off the couch entirely with a rough kick.
“Nice! I can tell you’re from Gotham, obviously, but how do you know the Bats?”
“Distant- uhh- family relation,” they grunted while Duke came back with a counter-attack.
“Ah, okay. Will you be staying long?” Kon asked. Duke admired his efforts to keep this conversation afloat amidst the chaos.
“Just until- Jon grab him and float up! We get some stuff- do me a favor and pick up this couch? Thanks. Then I’ll be out of your- oh slag, run!”
The reason Terry’s sentence had ended with “oh slag, run,” instead of something normal was because when Jon had picked Duke up, he had managed to convince the boy to join forces and attack their siblings together- which Terry had responded to by instructing Kon to grab the couch and make a break for it. This resulted in a very unwieldy game of keep-away being played across three levels, two elevators, and one garden of the mighty Watchtower. It ended when Duke finally managed to ambush Kon and allow Jon the opportunity to dodge Terry and fly off with the couch, which he set down in the dining hall (because it was the perfect place to wait for their respective parents).
Despite losing, Terry ended up passed out on the couch while the rest of them grabbed a bite to eat because “Apparently sleeping for an age just makes you really tired- which is majorly unfair.”
When Superman and Batman finally showed up and found them crammed on the crevices of the couch that weren’t occupied by Terry’s resting body, Duke could already feel the exasperation wafting off of Bruce. Jon flew over and gave his dad a hug- the noise from which woke Terry and absolved Duke of the guilt of shoving them off the couch one last time.
“Hello,” Superman in surprise when he realized Terry wasn’t one of the other half-dozen Batkids he had encountered before. He shot Bruce a long-suffering glance.
“Hey- oh wow you’re young,” mumbled Terry when they finished rubbing their eyes caught sight of who it was.
“I- thank you?” stammered Superman as both Superboys laughed.
“Is it time to go?” Terry asked, noticing Bruce’s presence.
“Yeah,” Duke said, helping them to their feet- anticipating the stumble this time.
“Schway. Well, it was nice meeting you all,” they said, accepting a floating hug from the youngest half-Kryptonian and a regular one from the elder.
“You too, Draculaura! Thanks for playing with us! Bye!” cried Jon.
“Bye, dudes!” said Kon, giving a little wave as the three of them took off for home.
Duke waited for a beat.
“Draculaura?” Bruce asked finally.
“My new codename!” supplied Terry. “A fun, fresh take on an old stick in the mud. Don’t you think it’s fitting?”
Bruce just sighed.
--
Looking back, Duke could see how the Kent boys came to the conclusion they did. Magic and monsters weren’t any crazier than Kryptonians, so who’s to say that the mysterious distant Bat-relative who was found sleeping in a cave “for an age” wasn’t a vampire? He hadn’t realized that it had looked like that until he made it home and got cornered by Tim asking what was up with Kon texting him about Draculaura all of a sudden.
“Holy facade, Batman,” Duke mumbled after reading the texts. “This is perfect.”
“Kon’s sudden interest in Monster High?”
“No, no, this-” he gestured to the screen. “-is our public scandal.”
Tim’s eyes lit up. “The one Bruce said we couldn’t have?” he asked.
“The very one,” Duke confirmed, a grin taking hold of his features. “We didn’t really mean to, but I guess we’ve kinda accidentally convinced Kon and Jon that Terry’s a vampire.”
Tim’s grin now matched his own.
“The seeds are planted, my avian friend,” Duke said solemnly. “Are you ready to be a gardener?”
Tim placed a firm hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Only if you never say something that weird again,” he whispered.
“That’s absolutely not going to happen,” he whispered back.
“It was worth a shot,” Tim said, patting him on the shoulder before taking back his phone and opening the Batkids group chat to inform everyone of their newest endeavor. It would have to be subtle, to avoid Bruce’s detection and subsequent destruction. It would also have to be smoke-and-mirrors, driven by details that seemed innocent enough when viewed separately, but all pointed to the conclusion of ‘vampire’ when viewed together. It would be a delicate operation. Fortunately, ‘delicate’ was a Batfamily specialty.
--
Ever since that day, the rumor had flourished. Barbara had created a few small stories online about possibly vampire-ish things happening in the city, Terry supplied a plethora of stories and half-truths they could use for the venture, and the rest of them gave appropriately misleading responses whenever the topic of the new Draculaura came up. Terry’s sleepiness was explained as a side-effect of being in vampiric hibernation. Their unfamiliarity with modern technology and culture became (allegedly) due to said hibernation. Their joke about how “The human concept of gender means nothing to me," became interpreted as a comment about not being human. “Mostly working at night” became “Can only work at night” through the gossip grapevine. They showed Terry around the sights because “You’re not familiar with this time period!”, and the fact that others interpreted that the wrong way wasn’t really their fault. Anytime Bruce came close to busting them, all they had to do was threaten to leak a copy of Batman: The Musical to the nearest speedster and he would quickly back off.
For a week they had near-perfect freedom to cause chaos, and it was glorious.
An important stipulation to their ruse was that nothing they said was an outright lie. This was so that when the other shoe dropped at Terry’s send off, they maintained the ability to plead innocence- a fact that Bruce was none too pleased with in the face of all their laughter.
“The ‘turning into a bat’ part?” he asked expectantly.
“Yup!” Terry said between giggles, already leaning on Steph for support. “I have actually been turned into a bat. Well, it was more of a Kirk Langstrom situation, but my statement still stands!”
“I’ll venture that this also encompasses the ‘having fangs’ bit?” Bruce deadpanned.
“I didn’t say I have fangs, I said I’ve had fangs. Past tense. Very crucial.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Yes it is! We never lied, we just-” here Terry stumbled when Steph sank to her knees from laughing too hard. “We just left a trail of misleading evidence pointing to a certain conclusion!”
“Manipulation isn’t any better than lying-”
“But it’s funny! Besides, I’m not even hearing this right now. I don’t listen to people who don’t pay me, remember?”
Bruce’s glare just sent everyone into a fresh wave of laughter. After a minute he sighed and shook his head, but they could all see the fond smile that had broken through the stern set to his mouth.
“You have everything you need?” he asked when Terry had recovered sufficiently enough for conversation.
They held up the accursed leashed Batpack.
“Locked and loaded, old man.”
“Alright,” Bruce said, hitting the button that would open the door to the awaiting portal. “Say ‘thank you’ to your folks for me, and don’t get into too much trouble, okay?”
Terry snorted. “You’ve known me for a week. Do you seriously think there’s even the slightest chance of that?”
“A man can dream,” Bruce said with a smirk.
“Well have fun dreaming about the impossible,” Terry replied with a matching set to the lips.
“Group hug!” cried Steph, jumping up from the ground to pull Terry and Bruce close, with Cass and Dick joining in next, then Duke, Tim, Barbara, Jason, and Damian.
“Alright,” Terry said, wiggling out of Steph’s hold enough to speak. “Don’t let him go all crazed loner hermit on you, okay people? He starts collecting soup if he’s left alone too long.”
“Soup?” repeated Bruce, bewildered.
“A whole closet full,” Terry responded. Nobody could tell if they were joking or not.
The portal pinged as the hug broke apart. Terry activated their suit, letting the sleek black envelop them fully and stepping up to the swirling vortex. Then they paused, turned, ran up to Damian, gave his hair a quick ruffle, dodged the retaliating swipe, and sprinted right into the portal with a final call of “See you later, twips!” lingering longer than they did as the doorway closed behind them.
--
“Hey Red, what happened to Draculaura? I haven’t seen them in a while,” Kon asked one day in the presence of a large group of Bats and other various Leaguers at the end of a joint mission. It had been a few weeks since Terry went home, but the ruse was still going strong.
“Oh, they were pretty tired,” Tim replied casually, eyeing the way the group's attention was caught and interest peaked. “They went to sleep again.”
“Aw man, really? Will we ever get to see them?” Kon asked, buying into his vague explanation hook, line, and sinker.
“Maybe,” he said, turning to hide a smirk and catching sight of Bruce’s tight frown. “They gotta focus on their health, you know?”
“Dang, Jon really liked them,” Kon sighed. “Do you think we could leave a message somewhere they’ll see when they wake up?”
“Sure,” Tim chirped, watching Bruce’s frown twitch.
A few minutes later, he saw Superman approach Bruce. Tim discreetly moved close enough to catch the tail-end of Supes saying “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Bruce opened his mouth, presumably to quietly correct him. No one was looking their way, this might be his chance- but then heard something.
The opening notes of “A Superstitious Cowardly Lot” being whistled a few yards away.
He sighed.
--
There was a moment of intense vertigo and light (that they must have seriously been out of it to not notice last time) before Terry’s feet hit a familiar cold stone floor and the sensations stopped. They paused for a moment to catch their breath, then opened their eyes to find- yes! The normal Batcave! Just to be sure, they ran over to the computer and booted it up, thanking the lucky stars when the display logo was correct and their login worked. The sound of skittering claws approached behind them and they turned in time to catch Ace barreling into their legs.
“Hey, boy! Hi!” they cried, trying to brace against the dog’s powerful excitement. “You missed me, huh?”
“He’s not the only one,” said a quiet voice from the base of the stairs.
Terry looked up and smiled. Bruce- their Bruce- was standing there doing that awkward ‘I’m happy but don’t know how to express that like a normal person’ thing. Terry felt a twinge of unease as they remembered the DNA thing, but decided to push that aside for the time being. That could be dealt with tomorrow. For now, they deactivated their mask and approached, throwing their usual decorum to the wind and seizing Bruce in their second ever hug.
The old man stiffened, but soon relaxed into the hold.
“That bad, huh?” he said.
“Ugh it was so weird,” they groaned, glad to be back with a normal Bruce with his normal old man smell. “You didn’t think I was dead, did you?”
“We figured out you were lost in the multiverse pretty quickly,” he said, matter-of-fact. They could hear the worry, though.
Terry breathed a sigh of relief and released Bruce from their grasp. “Everyone’s okay?”
“Ready to wring my neck, but yes.”
“That’s nothing new. It’s schway though, I brought gifts.”
Bruce raised a single judgmental eyebrow at the sight of Terry’s bag. They just rolled their eyes and produced a letter. It had seemed of poor taste to them to bring back a memento of Other Bruce’s kids- it would be cruel to hold an alternate version of his life over him, especially when he had relationships with his own kids that needed mending. Terry would look for all of them later. For now, they just handed Bruce the envelope signed with smooth, flowing handwriting that the man clearly recognized.
“I went to an alternate dimension that was also in the past,” they explained. “Your family was nice enough to accommodate me for the week.”
Bruce took the letter and started to say something, then thought better of it. “You were on your best behavior?” he asked instead.
“My best, yeah.”
He let out one of his almost-laughs.
“Go home, McGinnis. Your family’s worried.”
Terry, very eager to do just that, deactivated the rest of the suit and placed it in the charging port before gathering up the rest of their things and making towards the stairs.
“Terry,” came Bruce’s voice right before they disappeared from view.
They turned back. He was sitting in the Batchair, looking at them with a funny glint in his eyes that they had never been able to place before. After this past week though, they recognized it well.
“Yeah?” they prompted, letting the usual sarcastic tone they used with Bruce fall away for a moment.
“Thank you,” he said at last.
Terry smiled.
“You’re family too, old man,” they remarked, finally putting to words the sentiment neither of them had dared express before now.
Bruce’s answering smile said all that it needed to.