What happened

After running into Tim and sending him on his way to Barbara, downstairs, Bruce headed upstairs himself. The knock on Dick's door went unanswered. But there was a rustling...Bruce knocked again, and then opened the door slowly. Carefully. The bedroom was empty. But the window was opened. Papers from the table in the corner had caught in the influx of wind, and were blowing across the room sporadically. That was what he had heard.

The door closed behind him as he walked through Dick's room and stopped at the open window. He listened a few seconds, heard nothing troubling, and then leaned carefully out the window. Checked swiftly for trouble. And found the tip of Dick's boot jutting from the rooftop ledge overhead. This is what came of letting him have a bedroom on the highest floor of the manor, he though to himself. Shedding his suit coat, he ducked out of the window, then followed the boy's path up to the roof. When he pulled himself up onto the roof and sat down nearby, Bruce took the time to stare out over the City.

It was not his home. There were parts of it that looked familiar -- Arkham, for example -- but this place was not Gotham. The thought occurred to him that it might be useless, what he was doing (what they all were doing). What was the point of fighting crime in a place where, by all reckonning, the city itself created the criminals? He scowled, and turned to Dick.

"Plans tonight?"

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After the mostly-lighthearted banter and casual conversation at dinner, and once Alfred and Babs had distracted Jake and Oy by showing them the 'back yard', Bruce quietly explained the situation to Terry and Max, Dick and Helena.

"I cannot remember you."

The looks were incredulous. He held up a hand to forestall the anger and disbelief he saw there in those pairs of eyes across from him. "I know you. Some of you. Barbara Gordon - though not as she is now. Dick, of course, though..." He shook his head once at Dick. Something was different. Like static discharging between them in wide, vicious arches. Like the promise of blood on the boxing ring floor. "--Though there are some who I have no recollection of. Max, we met before I understand, but I do not recall it. Terry, you live in this place, but I cannot remember when I took you into my confidence. In fact, I remember nothing about what has happened since I arrived in the City, though I understand intimately what the City is -- at least, as well as anyone can -- and feel as if I have been here for some time."

This part was much harder. He did not admit easily to this sort of thing. But if he did not know, if he did not ask them, then danger increased for all of them. What villains lay in wait outside the Wayne Manor, ready to use the information that he did not have? No. He had to ask.

"I need your help. Tell me what I should know."

OOC: Backdated to the dinner

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It was like something out of a bad teen romance movie. The boy from the wrong side of the tracks finally decides to do something right, go for the prom queen, and everyone else decides to jump in the way. Well, it wasn't that anyone was really fighting Dick for Babs, not directly, but everyone everywhere was talking about her. Some had heard of her, and their boasting drew glares or rapt attentive eyes. Others merely gossiped, trading speculation based on rumors and blown-up stories.

Dick couldn't take much more of this.

Even the rooftops weren't much of a respite. He could still hear the voices, coming from open apartment windows. Sometimes he could hear fights starting, and for once, Nightwing had no desire to intervene. Let them fight. She was his, and they both knew it. Everything else - this weird obsession - it didn't mean anything.

Now, if one of those maniacs decided to go after her with a knife or something (people had odd ways of expressing admiration), then he'd jump down, but until then, he was content to merely fight the urge to cover his ears with his hands.

"Disgusting, isn't it?" The voice was lilting, a faint French accent to the words, and the tone dripped arrogance and a stretched patience.

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They walked the grounds at sunset.

Every so often, Bruce glanced to the side. Alfred always looked ahead, chin high, face impassive. The invitations had already been sent: You and a guest are cordially invited to Wayne Manor for a family dinner at 8 o'clock on Friday the 14th of April, 2006. Casual attire only. RSVP.

"You should have told me when you knew."

They'd already been over this. The fact that Bruce pressed the point again - a wholly unnecessary act - only demonstrated his irritation. There was nothing to be gained for it.

"My apologies, Master Bruce."

It was problemmatic for one such as Bruce to find himself in a place where he did not know every detail that went on under his roof. He was used to knowing everything; he depended on it. Apparently, however, Alfred had known about the additional guests living in Wayne Manor, and had chosen to keep it a secret. In further conversation, Bruce discovered that they'd been living there even longer than Bruce himself was aware. And they believed that Bruce had been there much longer than when he woke up in his bedroom, some weeks before.

He was also angry with himself, for not realizing that there had been other people in the house. He had certainly had enough time to figure it out on his own. The amount of time that it took him was unacceptable. Never mind that his guests had tried laying low; it was his home. He should have been aware. Bad things happened when he wasn't aware of everything around him. People got hurt. People died.

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"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theater that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real."

Nothing but shadows.

Dick tended to find himself relating to the gypsy characters in things. Granted, the one here was a 17-year-old stage actress who had just fallen hard for a bratty little Narcissis with a fancy portrait of himself. But for that paragraph, he... sort of actually got it. The life of a superhero was one that, when you took a big step back, was really rather ridiculous, but while you were living it, it was more real than anything else. Having a super-fancy car, and jumping off of rooftops was normal. Getting into fistfights with complete strangers was just part of a regular routine.

Sigh. And he'd thought the library would be a good place to relax, instead of thinking about things.

He was upended in an armchair that rested against the wall. His head barely had space on the seat, and his legs were stretched up along the wall, crossed at the ankles and in a comfortable sort of stretch. He turned the page.

"Yes," he cried, "you have killed my love! You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away."

[Text from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.]

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Once more this evening Terry slammed the controls of the Batmobile. He had attempted to enter the Batcave by way of the cliff face that the jet used to use, but the door wasn't responding to the code he was sending. The flying vehicle stopped just short of the metal doors camouflaged in paint.
"Slag it!" Terry grunted. "Um, guys? Could you let me in?" he asked over the comlink to the cave. "It's Terry. Didn't Commish-... Bar-... uh, Oracle tell you I was coming?"

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The talk with Bruce had gone better than he'd expected. Well, Dick hadn't really had expectations for how it would go, but it was easy to come up with several ways and places that he could've degenerated. At least they weren't really the bar-brawling types. Dick had slipped away to make the phone call to Babs; it hadn't been entirely true that he didn't know who was here, but catching up on any newcomers was a good idea at any rate.

He found a motorcycle that he suspected had been, or would become, his at some point, and took that relatively normal mode (only 'relatively' normal because of his driving ability) of transportation to the Clock Tower, trying to avoid thinking about how much he might've messed up - what had Babs called it - the 'space time continuim.'
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He missed Lucius. There was no one in City United Industries that he trusted to take over the day to day operations of the sections that had once been WayneTech. And he knew because he'd gone through every employee profile and department assessment trying to get to know this new version of the company. It'd left him with little time to do the things he wanted to do, when he wanted to do them. There was a reason Lucius existed in his universe and if he ever got back there, the man was getting a raise.

Tugging at his tie, and gratefully handing his briefcase over to Alfred, Bruce pondered if he wanted to just go upstairs and take a nap before heading out to the real work. He made a mental note to ask Barbara if she'd noticed an increased need to sleep since she'd been here, in the City. He wasn't able to get by on four hours the way he used to. It left him feeling out of touch with his body. Luckily the need hadn't come up too often for him to be awake that long.

"Soup, Master Bruce ?"

Bruce ran a hand through his hair. "I look it, Alfred ?"

"You look like you've just spent hours in talks with Lex Luthor, sir."

Bruce grinned. "Soup it is, Alfred. In my room ?"

"Of course, sir."

Putting his hand on the banister as he headed up, Bruce paused as a shadow flitted across the walls upstairs. It was too lanky to be Tim, and Tim would have been on the landing by now, scolding him like a fishwife for looking tired. The smile that started on his lips faded slightly when the shadow moved again. "Dick ?"

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Bruce Wayne wriggled and shimmied his way out of the arms of the woman who was practically humping him in the Wayne Manor driveway. She was not Pepper Saint James. Bruce wasn't quite sure who she was, only that he'd done a good job of appearing mildly drunk all day long and she had managed to be the only one among the group he was with who was sober enough to drive him home.

Somewhere in a very upscale restaurant he would be hard pressed to name; Pepper Saint James was plotting this woman's downfall. And right now Bruce couldn't blame her. He'd even applaud. The woman was a dragon, with the long red nails to match. And her perfume was killing his nose.

He shifted, politely moving her hands away from vulnerable areas of his body, and continued moving away from her. If he hadn't realized how shrewd she was on the drive over, he would have been more forceful. As it was, he was somewhat mildly trapped.

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Well. That hurt.

Babs' ear was still ringing, even five minutes after the feedback had shot through her headphones straight into her ear drum. It was a wonder she wasn't deaf and she hoped whoever was on the other end of that com-line wasn't either after that piercing ringing. That would teach her to put Speaker A too close to Receiver B.

Normally she wouldn't have done something like that, as it was a silly mistake to make, but she'd gotten excited. And for good reason. There was another com signal popping up on her network. It had all the coding of someone in the 'family', but she hadn't been able to get through to them and her readouts as to the location were sketchy at best. The signal was weak, but Babs couldn't complain because if the person had just been pulled through an alternate reality it was a wonder she was picking up anything at all. She didn't know much about how electronics traveled through dimensions, but she'd had to gather all new equipment from the city upon arrival.

She picked up the smaller receiver again and placed it in her lap, away from the speaker. Then, leaning over it, she went back to her computer and clicked on the signal again.

Ow.

Alright. The receiver went to the floor and the speaker was moved to the higher shelf, which took a but of effort on her part, but once it was done there was no annoying buzzing. And when she clicked the signal, she heard the sound of an open, if slightly static, com-line.

"Yes!" Babs grinned to herself, saving the still opened line in her computer. "Hello, is anybody there?"

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He fell from the sky. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. He was supposed to land on his feet, because that's the way he'd been positioned. Everything wasn't supposed to suddenly flip and spin and end with the painful smack of his body against cold, wet asphalt.

Asphalt?

There wasn't supposed to be asphalt there. He'd been inside, he could've sworn it. He'd seen marble floors. Marble floors, glass cases, fake potted plants, heavy wooden doors. Dim, dim lighting, but the bright red flash of the security system's alert light was clear. That was where he'd been. Now he was flat on his back, blinking up at clouds in a dark sky, and the brick facades of buildings on either side of him. He could smell cigarette smoke, and old urine, and something rotting nearby – it seemed to be fruit. He curled up into a sitting position, and had to stop to press his fingers to his head.

Ow.

What the hell had that been?

After a minute, the world stopped spinning, and he clambered ungracefully to his feet. An alleyway. One night of trying to get out of alleys and gutters, and he ended up back in one again. Typical Bludhaven, trying to thwart him at every turn. But, and it slowly hit him as he turned around, getting his bearings, that this didn't look like his city. The alley did, certainly, but alleys everywhere had a certain sort of look to them that seemed to be requisite. He took smooth, cautious steps towards the city beyond the alley, and watched the skyline come into focus. It wasn't Bludhaven at all.

Dick had done a lot of stupid things in his life. Sometimes, things had worked out, and sometimes they hadn't. But, he could honestly say that this was the first time he'd managed to lose his city.