WHO: John Blake WHAT: Dream Narriative. WHERE: Gotham City, Dreamspace. John's hotel room, Irvine. WHEN: Early Sunday morning. WARNINGS: Mentions of violence, character death and such.
The boys of St. Swithin's played games in the yard, and like most boys they tended to play at heroes. A few of the boys pretended to be Harvey Dent, but the vast majority only had one hero.
The Batman.
They told stories of him, running around and jumping off the high playthings, causing the Father to usually tear out his hair that one of them might get hurt. Even after the death of Harvey Dent, the boys still wanted to be Batman. They never stopped believing he'd come back. And neither did John Blake.
He was still young when the man came to visit, the man who provided so much of the Home's funding. Bruce Wayne; Gotham's playboy poster child. That's when Blake realized it. The same smile he wore, the same mask he hid behind, Bruce Wayne had mastered. You hid the anger, you pretended to be someone you weren't.
Someone who could handle the pain.
Someone like the Batman.
And John, as a child, realized with stark clarity what half the city couldn't figure out.
Blake shot up in his hotel room bed, gasping for air as if he'd been underwater. Gotham? Batman? What the hell was he dreaming of? He'd heard of the dreams; everyone had. But John Blake was a cop; a boring every day cop who didn't dream of being a superhero or magician or anything like that. He assumed it didn't apply to him. It couldn't.
But it did.
Even though it was 5am on a Sunday, he knew he wasn't getting back to sleep. John reached for his phone, trying to sort out a plan. He needed to talk to Bruce Wayne.