Batman: Beware The Night (An Elseworld's Fan Story)

Chapter I: Once Upon a Time in Gotham

December 5th, 2002

Wake. The morning light blinds my eyes. I get up from my bed, sitting on my bedside. Looking outside my crystal-clear window, I rub my eyes and grab my robe from the bed frame. I see Alfred waiting at my door, waiting for me. He leaves, stating to go make coffee for Selina and myself. Sometimes it's tricky for myself in the morning. I wake up sometimes from my TV being left on. The news confuses me; it makes me angry. It hurts to listen to.

Walking slowly out of my room, I go to get ready, wondering if Selina is waiting for me in the kitchen. My shower is lonely yet comforting. The water from my shower runs down my body; it burns my wounds and scars. Creeping myself out of the shower, looking at myself in the mirror, my body has no energy. My eyes are bloodshot with dark bags under them. I need my medication to stabilize myself for the day. But why? What is wrong with me? They call it an accident, but I call it the night I lost everything. Respect, honor, my future; even my own friends. I deserve it; shedding light tears every few mornings. Sometimes, I scream in anger for most mornings. I can't control it. I can't help it. My body tells me that I can't keep going anymore, but Selina and Alfred say otherwise.

My name is Teren Sinclaire-MacGinis; but you can just call me Terry. To make any kind sense of this, I need to go back four years. Back to the night that I died and something else was born inside of me. Back to the night the pain started. Clarifying that this is myself writing about my experience in the last month and not my thoughts, the small whispers in my head. If you live in the New England states, then you've probably heard of The Batman. That was me. After my accident, I started to live with this caretaker that my father, Warren MacGinis, knew. He was an old army buddy who served with him in Vietnam.

His name was Alfred Pennyworth. He's a good man and he was like my uncle in a way. I live with two other people as well. After my accident, I moved in with Alfred and have lived with him ever since. It was really a whole mess of affairs. I don't really want to get into it. It hurts to remember and if I could, I would erase it from my memory. Alfred was an ex-SAS member, and he basically taught me everything I knew. He alone allowed me to take back at least some semblance of my life. However, I knew that after my accident, my old life was over, and my new life was beginning. I knew that I could never go back to just being Terry MacGinis. The truth is, when my father died, something was born inside me, but it was kept in a cage. After my accident? It was freed from captivity and ever since that day, what was left of Terry MacGinis died the night of my accident.

There are 395,467 people living in Gotham, 150 more if you count the Heartland and the town of Bludhaven outside the city. The one thing that defines you, said my parents, are the things you cannot change. I used to live in the same neighborhood all my life until the accident, most people I know have. When your job is to protect the innocent and punish the wicked, it's best to know where these people started. Usually, it involves those who were born in the great divide or the ones that fell through the cracks.

In our world, there are no heroes. In my world, we hide in the dark and hide our identities because that's how we feel safe. Now criminals know who I am. I was a drunk driving teen that killed his best friends on prom night. I was a man caught up in a war against the scum of Gotham. I was a vigilante caught up in a test of faith and sanity and that's how I ended up here... However, I realized that no matter how hard I tried to change the hands of fate, it was always going to be something that I couldn't escape and at the end of it all, I was still myself. The lover, the killer, the betrayer, the one who survived.

Tonight was just another night in Gotham and I decided to go out for a drink. It's something I don't often do, but I thought fuck it and went. At this point, I had already been drinking like a fish, I didn't see the point of going out to a bar but at least the one I frequented was a real low-class shithole. It had just been another miserable day of feeling sorry for myself and drowning my sorrows in painkillers and smoking cigarettes. I had become what I fought to get rid of, a junkie and being a junkie makes you think. It makes you think about all the bad shit you've done and all the hell you've put others through. That whole thing about taking away the pain and taking away the suffering isn't true. The drugs just make it clearer who the villain is, and I was just the low-life trying to salvage something of a high-life.