I have been many things in my life: hero, villain, son, father,
saint, killer. I've been called alternately a genius and a madman.
I have been blessed with an almost photographic memory, and yet
for many months on end, I didn't know who I was. I am a living
paradox. Is it any wonder now that madness has claimed me? No,
I think not.
I sit here, perched high on a rock wall, watching my ally bathe
himself in a bubbling reddish muck he claims is the combined blood
of his enemies over the centuries. It's foul smelling stuff, whatever
it is. He rants to his faithful, the black clad rabble who line
the stone catwalks high above the pit. He preaches to them of
his power and his might and his returned glory. Blah, blah, blah.
Brother Blood is every bit the narcissist I remember him to be.
One of the few constants with the world I remember. So here I
sit, listening to Blood, contemplating how I came to be here.
I am feeling remarkably clear headed tonight. I don't know whether
it's the fumes from this place, the blows I took to the head in
my recent fight against the Titans of this world, or maybe it's
just the phase of the moon. It doesn't matter why. It does afford
me the opportunity to write my memories down, now, while my thoughts
are wholly my own. Before the haze of madness and the confusion
of the life forced upon me cloud my mind again.
If I am clear on nothing else, let me so now… This world I am
on is not my home.
I guess I should start at the beginning. I could begin in the
middle, but that might confuse things. The beginning of this story
starts way back in 1924, in a cheery place called Gotham city.
It was there a petty crook named Joe Chill shot and killed the
parents of eight-year-old Bruce Wayne right in front of the poor
lad. Now poor Bruce never got over that dastardly event and though
he spent the next 15 years in the company of his world traveling
Uncle Phillip, he secretly trained himself to become the ultimate
weapon against crime. Bruce was big on secrets, you see. So anyway,
here's Bruce getting all worked up to become the ultimate crime
buster when in late 1938 he gets beaten to the punch by an alien
in blue tights named 'Superman'. But not to be outdone, Brucey
becomes the Bat-Man in 1939.
No I didn't get the dates wrong. Yes I'm well aware that everybody
remembers when Batman and Superman first came on the scene and
it was just 12 years ago. Well guess what? Where I came from,
it happened different. Superman, Batman, even Wonder Woman and
Aquaman showed up all around 1940. Well, not so much Aquaman,
he showed up once or twice, but nobody much remembers him being
there. Anyway, there were others too, the ones you folks remember,
Green Lantern, Flash, Dr. Fate and the whole Justice Society of
America gang. But on my world, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman
were right there from the beginning.
Now in 1940, something important happened. You see, another young
boy named Richard Todd Grayson was performing with his family
in a circus. But the circus was being worked over by a protection
racket, and poor Dick's parents were killed right in front of
him. Coincidentally in front of Bruce too, so big-hearted Bruce
decides to adopt young Dick and make him his crime-fighting partner,
Robin the boy wonder. Together they fight crime, and fight nazis,
and fight more crime, and so on, and so forth. At some point Bats
and the other JSA gang get bathed in this 'temporal energy' stuff
that greatly retards their aging. In fact, they get bathed in
so much of it, even their friends and family who were nowhere
near 'em when it happened are effected. Robin stays physically
twelve for seemingly forever. Finally he gets old enough somewhere
around 1953 to marry his also slowly aging long time sweetheart,
Bat-Girl. (There was a Bat-woman, a Bat-dog, and even a Bat-mite
too, but they're not important right now.) So Dick and Bette prepared
to live happily ever after. Bruce got married too, but not to
Bat-woman, oddly enough. No, he married Catwoman, one of his former
enemies, somewhere around '57 or '58. No, I don't know why she
was physically young too, but she was. Anyway, Bruce retired as
Batman and even though everyone thought he was only a rich playboy,
he somehow became police commissioner. Dick went to law school,
and continued to put on his little Robin outfit for years to come,
although he would get rid of the short shorts he'd been forced
to wear for years, much to wife Bette's disappointment. Did I
mention Dick's wife's maiden name was Bette Kane? Okay, so there
that is.
Where
was I? Oh yes, I'm just getting to the good part. So now it's
1960. Helena Wayne is born to Bruce and Selina Wayne that year.
This makes them both very happy. Five years later, Richard Bruce
Grayson is born to Dick and Bette. Now, how my parents managed
to go so long without having children given the state of birth
control at the time is beyond me, but they did. I'm sure my father,
the appropriately named Dick, blamed mom, since my birth was rough
on her. She never really recovered from that. Now back then, I
worshiped my dad and my uncle Bruce. I was a kid, what did I know?
My whole young life, I wanted to be my crime fighting dad's partner,
just like he was for Uncle Bruce. In 1975, I was the envy of my
'cousin' Helena by becoming… Jay, the new Boy Wonder! See, Helena
had been banned by her folks from taking up crime fighting. Course,
Dad and I knew she'd been training with us in secret. So there
we were, Robin and Jay, the new Dynamic Duo. It was fun at first.
Except the shorts. Dad insisted I wear shorts. Nothing like passing
humiliation down to your kids, is there?
I met some other kid heroes from my generation too. There was
Jesse Quick, she was the daughter of Johnny Quick and Liberty
Belle, and had inherited her father's speed. And Garth Curry,
we called him Aqualad after his dad. Speedy the archer was around
too. Roy, Speedy's real name for those who don't already know,
actually should have been a contemporary of my dad's, but he got
lost on one of those time traveling adventures, so by the 'time'
the JSA rescued him, he was still a kid, but nearly 30 years displaced
forward in time. He was always a bit of a square. And lastly there
was Wonder Girl, she was Wonder Woman's much younger sister, Drucilla,
who finally managed to get off Paradise Island and move to 'man's
world'. We formed a little team we called the Teen Titans. Oh,
other members came and went, folks like Beastling and Hornet,
but usually it was just the five of us.
Lot's of stuff happened in the early '80's. First Aunt Selina
died, and Helena became 'the Huntress' to avenge her. Uncle Bruce
died not long after, putting on his Bat suit one last time only
to get killed in it. Helena avenged him too I think. Dad and I
helped. The Titans would break up, then get back together then
break up again a couple of times as we kept being pulled apart
by our separate lives. Dad was getting more melancholy after all
that. He and Mom started fighting more. It's hard to remember
sometimes what it was about. I know Mom's health had been declining
slowly and steadily for years. I think maybe she wanted him to
stay home with her and give up his Robin ID. But though Dad should
have been a 50 something year old man, physically he looked maybe
35 on a bad day. That temporal energy bath again.
1984. That was the year that changed everything. I remember it
well if I remember nothing else about my past. I was 19. A little
over a year earlier, the Titans had reformed with myself, Dru,
Jesse, Beastling, Starfire, Raven and Psiborg as our line up.
We had just formally inducted a young girl named Terra onto the
team. It was just after our team up with Green Arrow's Outsiders.
Dru and I had slipped back to Gotham for a romantic weekend. For
some reason, we needed to stop by Wayne manor that night… I remember,
I had left my good winter jacket in the Batcave after a case,
and I wanted it for our date that night. It was there I caught
them… My father and my 'cousin' Helena, mostly disrobed, entwined
about each other on the floor of the cave. I was stunned. Then
I was furious. I attacked Dad on the spot. Dad was so embarrassed
he didn't even try to defend himself. Dru had to pull me off him.
I never wore the Jay costume, or worked directly with my father
again. I tried to avoid speaking to the man, truth be told. I
moved to New York with Dru. It took me a while to pick a new costumed
identity. Eventually, I settled on Nightwing. I had my heart set
on Batwing, but some other clown in a flight harness picked that
one up before I could claim it. Jerk. In fact, I debuted as Nightwing
when I went with Joe to rescue the team from Joe's brother, the
Ravager and his allies in SKULL. He'd brainwashed Terra into infiltrating
the Titans and learning our secrets so the Ravager could then
ambush us in our private lives and, in turn, give the Titans over
to SKULL to fulfill a contract first taken by his dead father.
You follow that? Anyway, we beat down the Ravager, saved Terra,
yaddah yaddah yaddah.
That was the first time I remember taking a life. A SKULL agent.
Kicked him over a ledge. Only this time, I let him fall to his
death. In all the melee and confusion, no one saw what happened.
I could have taken an extra second and caught him, but I didn't.
And I wasn't sorry. There was a fire raging in my heart, a deep,
primal sort of thing. And it was growing. A part of me recognized
the danger of wallowing in that dark fire and fought against it,
the rest of me didn't care.
It only got worse in Christmas of '84, when Mother died. She
just… died. She had begun deteriorating even faster once Dad's
infidelities came to light. Less than a year after I caught them
together, Mom died. The only good that came of it was the opportunity
to smash Dad across the mouth again at the funeral. Dru and I
tried to get married later that year, but Raven, who was supposed
to be dead already, tried to kill us at the ceremony.
It was late '85, maybe '86 when the shadow creatures came. They
overwhelmed us, destroying everything in their path. They would
have destroyed me to, but I dimly remember being grabbed by a
spindly 'man' in a flowing purple robe. The robe thing said he
had plans for me and snatched me out of time. After that… things
get blurry.
I was transported elsewhen. I say it that way because all of
a sudden I believed I was my father, of all people, fighting alongside
very different Titans from the ones I'd known. I mean, Starfire
was a woman for God's sake, a voluptuous woman I got to make love
to, but a woman none the less. I spent a lot of years in that
strange pocket universe, fighting against… some kind of emperor
I think. I met and romanced Miri there, a lovely girl who reminded
me instinctively of Dru. (I had forgotten who I was, remember,
playing a role in some sick fantasy world.) So at some point,
I wound up in this world, thinking I've traveled back to 'my'
past to stop this emperor guy from being born, or something like
that. But in fact, I was supposed to be an evil infiltrator to
get inside the heroes of this world's trust, then slay them for
this Extant guy, who as it turns out was really my old friend
Hank Hall. But what Hank didn't know was that this robed guy had
placed myself, Mirage, and Terra to heroically infiltrate his
infiltrators. Unfortunately for the grand scheme, by the time
I was supposed to help save the day, this world's Raven had already
attacked me. She implanted this demon seed within me and, believe
me, when that seed hit the dark fires of hatred in my heart, it
hit fertile ground. So I change my name to Deathwing, (oooo scary)
to reflect my new villainous outlook. Together, Raven and I made
the Titans lives miserable for quite a long time. Slowly, my memory
began to heal itself, I didn't exactly remember who I really was,
but I knew this wasn't my world, and I was not Dick Grayson.
Well the final showdown came and went and as usual the Titans
won. My mind was too fogged in falsehoods to appreciate the irony.
I was placed in a suspension capsule for months while they tried
to figure out how to get the demon seed out of me. I fared better
than Raven, they killed her… again. The seed died on it's own,
and eventually they released me. But the seed had left its mark…
the good man that I was is nothing but memory now. Nothing but
those black fires remain. Over the next few months, I regained
most of my memories. It gets hard to keep straight sometimes,
because the I still retain the false history that Extant gave
me, which lines up pretty well with this present world to a point.
Miri has born me a son after our last amorous encounter. I don't
care what she calls him, his name is will always be Richard the
third to me. No, I'm not naming him after my father, I hate him.
He's named after me, so there.
Anyway, a few months ago, men representing the Church of Blood
approached me. They asked if I would help them in a plan to revive
their fallen leader by impersonating him. Having nothing better
to do, I played along. I encountered my 'old friend' Roy and his
kid Titans. They reminded me of how much I missed leading the
team. I was denied that here by my father, who on this world had
stolen my very identity as his own. So I decided to steal a team
of Titans for my own. The Church wasn't too pleased with my initial
efforts, nor were they pleased when I used their resources to
reclaim my son. But both of our plans worked. I had a team of
Titans I could mold into my own, they had their precious Brother
Blood back.
As
usual, my father ruined everything. He got his own Titan buddies
together, and his good once again triumphed over my evil. Oh how
I hate that man! Our collective plan thwarted, Blood and I returned
here to his home nation of Zandia to plot anew. I'm not sure why
I'm still here, with Blood, I mean. I am no longer goalless as
I was before the Bishops of Blood found me. My goal is a simple
one, I intend to utterly destroy everything Richard Todd Grayson
has ever built, especially his Titans, and reclaim what is rightfully
mine, especially the Titans and more especially the name Nightwing.
I suppose I see Blood and his organization as a means to that
end and that's why I'm here. Or perhaps I enjoyed the rush of
the kind of fawning attention Blood gets from his worshipers,
the power he has over them, and sit here looking for a way to
get it back. I do so covet the man's power. But I must be careful.
Blood is no fool. I must make sure he believes my pledge of loyalty
is one hundred percent genuine. To that end, I've adopted a new
name… Bloodwing, and altered my costume to resemble his.
For now I sit, and bide my time. Patience is one of the few things
my father taught me that's worth remembering. Eventually, I will
prevail. After all, the world's greatest heroes trained me. How
can I loose?
presents: