Terry Mcginnis (batman2point0) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-02-12 20:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | terry mcginnis |
Who: Terry McGinnis [Complete as Narrative, Open to Bruce or Babs if you want. ;]
What: Training. Forcing himself to move forward.
When: Thursday evening into the early morning hours.
Where: His room, then the training room of the clock tower.
Warnings: none.
It was nearing midnight when Terry woke for the third time in three hours of sleep drenched in cold sweat. Shaking from the aftermath of his latest nightmare he looked around with bleary eyes. His room was still dark. He could see the moon from the window; that meant it was still early. He rolled out of bed and turned on a hot shower in the next room. As if to melt away the recent layer of voices, doubts, and pain planted in his mind thanks to his week and a half of captivity. He should have found another way. Bruce would have found a way out. His eyes closed against the cascading hot water that touched his bare skin.
Terry McGinnis was not Bruce Wayne. He was not Dick Grayson. He was not Tim Drake. He was defiantly not Jason Todd.
He was Batman, but he was not the Batman.
Terry was nothing like anything Gotham had ever faced against or wholly supported. He liked it that way. That didn’t mean there weren’t days when he wondered why he pretended to be Batman at all. That he was better off starting fresh, becoming an entirely new entity, not just a fake Batman. More often than not he ran into more trouble because of it. Because of the alias and Batman's reputation. But sometimes he was able to work with that. Use that reputation to his advantage.
Terry slipped into comfortable clothes and left his room. He had to stop comparing himself to Bruce. Had to stop seeing things that weren't really there. In his logical mind he knew that. He had to stop living in the past, living in fear. Or he would end up making Batman's mistakes. End up becoming him. He actually would lose himself. He started to work through his anxiety on a mat. Stretching and carefully moving through a martial arts form Bruce once showed him. Created for him based on his abilities and natural agility without the suit's added power bonus'. One step at a time. As if he were starting from the beginning all over again. Breathing with each swift, lethal attack. But his mind was elsewhere. Divided.
The fake Joker- The Joker operating in Tim Drake’s body and that disparity- had never expected Batman to have a sense of humor, much less fight dirty. Terry liked to talk, like to distract bad guys and piss off villains with his wit and never-ending quips. Some would say it was his charm, others his flaw. It all just depended how you looked at it and which side you were on. Terry wanted to be that again. He would have to adapt. Re-learn and face his fears.
But the fact of the matter was; Terry was not the Batman. He knew that, and would always know that.
The only person Wayne ever stopped from taking the mantle was Terry, first when he found out about the Batman and stole the suit to avenge his father’s death, and later on when the Joker-copy came back. Even then, that didn’t stop Terry from doing what he wanted to. Terry wasn’t like that. He saw what being Batman did to people- to the people that cared the most- and he wasn’t going to let that same fate fall to the ones he cared the most because he couldn't adapt. Because he couldn't deal. So he struggled silently and juggled his fear. That was some of what set him apart from the Batman. He saw all the things Wayne did wrong, and saw all the reasons why his ex-sidekicks hated him so much. He knew he couldn’t let that happen to him. He had to keep pushing. No matter how hard it was. The other Supers and Vigilantes thought he was too new, too reckless, and too trigger-happy. The older Supers and Vigilantes thought he was too young, too inexperienced, and too different. Villains didn’t even take him seriously, half the time.
But the longer he worked through those movements the less he cared. The more focused he became.
He knew who he was now without a doubt as he came to the end of the kata, the end of his meditation. Regrets and mistakes, he was Batman. Maybe not the Batman but he wouldn't have it any other way.