Boom. BOOM.
The ground heaved. Dick understood immediately — Jason had chosen this location deliberately. The gang fight, the drawn-out battle, all of it staged to lull him into position. The explosives had been planted long before tonight.
He never stopped underestimating Jason's cunning, and Jason never stopped proving him wrong.
No time for self-recrimination. Dick flung his grapple line toward a distant tree, borrowed the force, and launched himself clear of the blast. He felt the heat at his back as the shockwave rolled past.
Then the chase began.
They tore through the Gotham skyline — across rooftop ledges, down into narrow alleys, up the sheer faces of glass towers. Neither of them had Thea's abilities, or Diana's. They were two ordinary men, and from any height over a hundred meters (330 ft), a missed grip meant death. Just grapple lines, momentum, and the willingness to bet their lives on the next swing.
Neither flinched.
Dick had grown up performing aerial acts before he could walk properly — his body understood flight on an instinctive level that no amount of training could fully replicate. The advantage was slim, but it was real.
They landed on the roof of a moving freight train. Dick moved a half-second faster. He knocked the grapple gun from Jason's hand.
They faced each other. The train screamed beneath their feet, iron wheels hammering track. Sound echoed flatly in the tunnel walls around them. The final confrontation had arrived.
"Not bad for a circus act," Jason said — but the tunnel noise swallowed the words before they could reach Dick.
A faint smirk crossed Jason's face. He turned and sprinted in the direction of the train's travel.
Dick went after him. Before he'd taken two full strides, he watched Jason reach back, pull off the cape, and let it catch the tunnel draft — sending it billowing straight toward him.
His field of vision vanished.
A flash of alarm — then he clamped it down. This is exactly what he wants. In the tunnel, with the train's roar drowning everything, his hearing was useless. The cape blocked his eyes. He was navigating blind, on a speeding train, with a lethal opponent somewhere in the dark.
"Should we save him?" Ivy called over to Masie, keeping her distance above. Close-quarters combat wasn't her strong suit, after all.
"No." Flat and final.
The two women watched and waited.
The critical moment came. Dick committed completely — abandoned defense, abandoned caution, abandoned any margin for error. If he misjudged, on a moving train, the fall would finish him. But his read of Jason was exact.
Jason had chosen the most direct path: straight in.
The moment Jason lunged, Dick was already airborne. A full-force kick with every ounce of weight behind it.
"No—"
Dick felt the impact of a human body. He stripped the cape away.
The train burst out of the tunnel. They were over Gotham's river canal now — and Jason Todd, balance shattered, tumbled off the roof and dropped into the water below.
"He won't die from that, right?" The two observers returned to whispering.
"Not a chance. Watch how he hits the water. He saw this coming." Masie had already read the angle of the fall.
"Fair enough. The new Batman is settled, then — which means Gotham's chaos should wind down. Let's go check on the Birds of Prey."
They slipped away without a trace, moving toward the other side of the city.
Nightwing stood at the medical pod, one hand resting on the clear surface, watching Tim sleep.
"You think I refused the cowl out of cowardice," he said quietly. "Or guilt. Neither is true."
"I turned down the role because he asked me to. In the message Bruce left me, he said he wanted Nightwing and Robin to protect this city. I followed that." He paused. "But Bruce isn't infallible. He made a miscalculation. He underestimated what Batman means to the people of Gotham."
Dick pulled off his mask, exposing the tired eyes of a man who'd been running without sleep for too long.
He'd spent years after leaving the cave trying to build a life that didn't orbit Wayne Manor — his own work, his own identity, free of Bruce's shadow. All of it was moot now. The choice was in front of him: stay in Blüdhaven as Nightwing, or come home to Gotham as Batman.
He looked at Tim Drake — barely breathing, kept alive by machines — and found he had no choice at all.
He peeled off the Nightwing suit, stood bare in the cave's cold light, and reached for the suit on the rack.
Every memory that came with it — early hero worship, the weight of what it had become, the grief of the past month — he let it all fall away.
He pulled on the cape.
Bruce. Wherever you are — be with me.
From this moment on, he was no longer Nightwing.
He was Batman.
Tim Drake woke up a day later. Between Ivy's plant extract and the medical pod's full battery of treatments, his recovery was faster than it should have been. By the time he was on his feet, the worst of the damage had mended.
The emotional damage was harder.
He learned that Nightwing had taken up the cowl. He stared at the ceiling of Wayne Manor and couldn't name what he felt. Nightwing has found his path. What about mine?
He stepped outside.
A graceful silhouette was making her way up the drive toward him.
"Miss Thea. Is something wrong?"
"Alfred said you'd taken a hit and weren't doing well," Thea said. "Asked me to come talk things through with you."
Tim straightened as best he could, though a hundred different things crowded his mind. His head, at least, was still sharp. He cut through to what mattered most.
"Is Bruce really beyond saving? Not even a chance?"
Thea was quiet for a moment. "I hope the final answer is yes. I've known Bruce longer than you have. We disagreed on plenty, but he's a man worth respecting, and I'll try everything before we reach the point of no return. But if it comes down to a choice — I will choose this world over him."
Tim grabbed onto that sliver of hope and asked what he could do. If he couldn't find his own path, finding someone who could show him one was a start.
Thea cut him off gently and nodded toward the manor behind her. "Come inside. Nightwing — sorry, Batman now — and the others haven't forgotten Bruce any less than you have. You all just came at it from different directions."
She kept her tone easy, but she was running on fumes. Her projection was burning through one timeline after another, and every bit of that weight fed back to her. One conversation. Then sleep.
The new Batman had been out fighting all night; when word came that Thea was here, he came straight out. Damian was roused on her request. Alfred drifted into the hall as well. They gathered together, waiting for her to speak.