The night wind in Gotham is so cold that it almost freezes tears. When people shed tears, all the light they see becomes hazy and dreamy, like a sad romantic poem.
Sitting on the edge of the building, Dick felt the cold wind blowing the tears on his face, almost freezing his skin. Suddenly, he heard unusual footsteps behind him, steady but heavy.
When Dick turned around, when he saw the dark and slender figure, he instinctively trembled, but in the next second, he realized that it was not the Batman he knew.
Originally, he should have felt nervous when facing a strong stranger, but when he realized this fact, Dick felt relieved. He would rather face the enemy now than face Bruce.
"You shouldn't be here." A voice much deeper than Bruce's sounded again.
Dick turned around and sat on the edge of the roof again. He sniffed and said, "I don't know you. You don't care where I should appear."
"He never taught you not to leave your back to strangers." Although this strange figure said this, he had no intention of attacking. He just walked over slowly and stood beside Dick.
"He didn't teach me a lot, and I don't need him to teach me." Dick said with his hands on the eaves.
"He is not a good father." The strange Batman said: "Batman will disappoint everyone."
"I let him down." Dick quietly looked at the lights under the roof of the building. He took a deep breath and said, "I know I made him angry and made him feel very disappointed and disappointed.
sad."
"I don't know what is driving me to do this." Dick shook his head and said, "I don't know why, when I faced him face to face, I had so many negative emotions in my heart, like a sea."
"I'm worried that he thinks I'm stupid, but I also feel that he should realize earlier that I'm stupider than others. I'm afraid that he will find that I'm inferior to others, but I also feel that he must have already considered me inferior to others."
"I'm afraid that he will lose his patience, but I also want to know what he will do to me when he loses his patience. I know that irritating him will make him sad, but I can't help but watch him lose control. I can no longer maintain the appearance of winning.
He looked very embarrassed."
Dick stretched out his hands to cover his face, and his voice seemed to be covered with a layer of fog: "I want to make him happy, but I also secretly laugh when he is unhappy. I am simply the worst bad boy in the world."
"It's not your fault." The strange Batman said: "He made a wrong choice between career and family, and he never thought about correcting it. He deserves to suffer the consequences."
The unfamiliar Batman turned to look at Dick. The little boy's red eyes were like fragile and brittle ice after being blown by the cold wind.
"I can't find an answer." Dick shook his head slightly and said, "Because of my inexplicable bad thoughts, because of my unbearable behavior that angered him, and because of my unreasonable and rude behavior."
After saying that, he turned his head, looked up at the strange Batman standing next to him, and asked: "Who are you?"
This time, the unfamiliar Batman did not answer with "I am Batman". He looked back at Dick, reached out and touched the edge of his mask, and then took off the mask.
As Dick expected, it was not Bruce, but what shocked him was that the man in front of him was very similar to Bruce.
It's just that he is older and more tired.
"Do you have time to listen to a story?" The strange man asked another question in a positive tone. He squatted down, put his feet on the edge of the house, and looked at the city.
"There is also Gotham in my world, but after the shooting of crime, Bruce Wayne is dead, and Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne are alive."
"But maybe, at that time, we were also dead, but not yet buried, leaving a little room for imagination in this sad world."
"Martha couldn't accept the death of her son. She went crazy, cut the corners of her mouth, and turned into a madman who was always smiling. And I, in order to revenge and eliminate criminals, became the Dark Knight of Gotham and became...
Batman."
"In the past few years, I have been running around every corner of Gotham, fighting the crimes that will never be finished, and destroying the darkness that will never be wiped out. I never stop for a moment, and I don't have a moment to spare."
"Days like this have wiped away all the happiness and made those good memories blurred. I have become the most unhappy person in the whole city, and Martha wants me to be happy. She wants me to smile.
, and the method is to cut the corners of my mouth."
"I can't let her do this. I'm trying to fight against her, against the wife I once loved most."
"I thought that days like this would last forever, until one day I learned that Barry, the Flash, could reverse time and change the past by running at extremely high speeds. So, I found him and I wanted Bruce to survive."
"Barry is a kind man and he agreed to my proposal. I was overjoyed to find Martha and said that our son would be back soon and that everything would be back on track."
"But later, Martha and I knew that if we were the ones who died that day, then Bruce would become Batman and repeat this dark and tragic fate. Martha became even crazier and couldn't laugh anymore, so she
died."
Dick listened quietly, as if he was really listening to a story. When he turned to look at the man next to him, he didn't see any sad look on his face, only the same numbness and exhaustion as before.
"Barry has an enemy. He calls him Professor Zoom. He can run very fast and can travel through the universe. Barry and I wanted to stop him from doing evil, but at the last moment, he took me out of my universe."
"He said that he would send me to a new universe to see with my own eyes how his son was tortured by darkness."
"He succeeded, and so here I am, in a world where Bruce Wayne is Batman."
"And in this world, I have already died, and died together with Martha under the gunfire of a criminal suspect... Yes, I am Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father."
"He shouldn't be Batman." Thomas' tone finally fluctuated and became deeper.
"The world doesn't need Batman. The Dark Knight of Gotham can't change anything. He should return to Bruce's life to end the tragedies that may happen and be an ordinary person or a good father."
When Thomas finished speaking, his eyes fell on Dick's face. Dick pursed his lips, showing a trace of hesitation. After a moment of silence, he spoke.
"Sometimes, I feel aggrieved. Bruce doesn't seem to understand me at all. Maybe my talents are not enough for him to take seriously."
"In the past, he may have had no choice. He needed an assistant and successor. He met me, so he took me back. But now, he has met someone better, and he should indeed pay attention to them and train them.
This way he can have a better heir."
"As for me..." Dick tilted his head slightly and said, "I shouldn't stay here anymore. I should go back to Bludhaven and be a small town boy."
"But the reason why I didn't do this was because I was unwilling. My parents were not capable of investigating the death of my grandfather. They were just ordinary acrobats. If someone pointed a gun at them, they couldn't hide."
"I want to learn from Batman. After learning the skills, I can avenge my grandfather and protect my parents."
"If that's the case, why should I care whether Bruce values me? I just regard him as a teacher who teaches me my skills."
"So, I will also think about whether I want too much. He is not my biological father and has no obligation to raise me. I should not anger him, I should not make trouble with him, and I should not make mistakes when I myself
Then he ran out like a crying baby."
"Why would I do this?" Dick asked himself softly.
"Because you love him." Thomas said, "You love him, so you want to know if he loves you too... But he let you down."
Thomas looked down at Dick and said, "Batman wants to pick a good assistant, but he doesn't understand that in trying to cultivate an heir, he will miss out on more."
"It would be a complete tragedy to miss the most precious things in the world, to miss the love others had for him, and to miss the love he had for others that once flashed across his mind."
"The evil in this world will not disappear completely because of one person. If someone takes this as a goal and even gives up all love, then he is the stupidest fool in the world."
Dick's hands suddenly tightened, his Adam's apple moved, and he took a deep breath and said, "I hope he won't be so lonely."
"But Batman is doomed to be lonely." Thomas sighed drifting into the distance.
"Are you here to convince me?" Dick turned and stared at his profile and asked, "You want me to convince him not to be Batman anymore?"
"You are very smart."
Dick felt a sense of anger at being taken advantage of, but he suddenly thought that the man in front of him was Bruce's father, who knew Bruce better than him and was closer to Bruce than he did.
Dick stood up and turned around and walked back, saying as he walked: "I will not be used by you to say anything to Bruce. The quarrel between the two of us is only our business and has nothing to do with you."
Thomas stood up, looked at his back, and said in a low voice: "Even if I don't use you, one day you will understand these truths."
The next second, he fell towards the bottom of the tall building, followed by the gleaming batarang, which only missed his skin by a few centimeters.
Thomas jumped from the tall building and sank into the shadow on the side of the stairs. Then he swung up on the hook and started jumping between the rooftops.
Another figure that was almost identical to him was chasing behind him, but Thomas was running in the shadows, while the other Batman was leaping between the neon lights.
Two black figures jumped onto the roof of Wayne Tower one after another. Thomas had already put on a mask. Therefore, Batman felt a trance when he looked at this identical self.
"Who are you?"
"I am Batman."
After saying this, Thomas jumped off the building again, but Batman did not chase him because he was shocked by the true and false answers in his mind and was unable to act for a while.
With a click, the door lock was unlocked, and a figure wrapped in a cloak appeared in the dim inquiry room. Thomas took off his mask, walked to the table and sat down, and opposite him was a pair of gray eyes.
"Did you see the result?" Gray eyes blinked.
"You're right, I'm not a good father...and neither is he."
"Do you want to stop him?"
"I have to stop him, and if you help me, you are also helping yourself. That's why I came to you, Professor Schiller, or... the clown."
