"Grandpa?"
"Oh?"
Bruce sat up from the sofa, he didn't know when he had fallen asleep. As you get older, it's easy to get confused.
This is the study room in Wayne Manor. In the exquisitely beautiful fireplace, flames were blazing. Although there was lightning and thunder outside with a torrential downpour, it was still warm indoors.
He was sitting on a sofa not far from the fireplace, a blanket covering his legs, and a half-empty glass of whiskey on the small round table beside him, glistening in the firelight.
The voice calling him was that of his little granddaughter, Damian's daughter, four years old this year.
At the moment the little girl was wearing a white puffy dress, standing with her hands behind her back at the doorway of the study, her large watery eyes looking at him.
"What's the matter, my little princess? Why aren't you playing with them?"
Outside the door, there were many children, laughing happily and playing strange games. Bruce thought he really was getting old; he couldn't understand what was so fun about those games anymore.
"Grandpa, I want you to tell me a story."
"Alright, how about I tell you the story of Zorro against the Governor, and how he won the heart of the Governor's niece?"
"No, those are all fake, I want to hear something true." The little girl shook her head, her braids swaying in the air, showing a dissatisfied expression as if saying, 'You still think I'm a little kid.'
"Okay, then you can pick a Batman story from the bookshelf, and I'll tell it to you."
Against the wall in the study were a dozen tall bookshelves, filled entirely with accounts of his early experiences. More than a decade ago, he had finally locked up all the world's villains in the safest prison, and he could retire.
On the bookshelves were not only memoirs of these events, but also various keepsakes given to him by the Gotham Government, and photos with some old friends.
The little girl approached the bookshelves, her hands clasped behind her back, pacing back and forth as if selecting something from the names on the spines.
"But there's just too many."
Bruce rubbed his brow, feeling his vision blur: "That's why I need to record them all. But even so, half of them are contradictory, unable to connect with each other. But I assure you, they're all true."
He lifted the blanket off his legs, spread his arms open, and spoke to her with a smile, filled with kindness.
He was already old, just a retired elder.
The little girl quickly darted over to him, deftly climbing onto his lap and pulling up the blanket with her little pink hands to cover her own small belly as well.
She handed the book in her hand to Bruce. Bruce took it and found the title was "The Mystery Case of the Chemical Company," the beginning of it all.
"Grandpa, I want to hear this one!"
Bruce's gaze inevitably shifted, and he saw the accompanying photos in the book, and memories surged along with it. It was his first time as Batman, involved in a case in Gotham.
"Strange, I don't remember the story starting like this..."
"Don't get confused, Grandpa, this is how it starts."
The little girl hugged his neck, her eyes fixed on the book, whispering sweetly in his ear.
"Ah, yes, what was I thinking? I'm sorry, everything started with that window."
He chuckled, patting the little girl's head, and lifted the book again.
....................
Everything began with a window, and a scream.
"Come out, I know you're there!" A young man held a gun, trembling, pointing it at the darkness in the corner of the house.
A Bat Dart flew in from another corner, knocking the gun out of his hand.
"I've been in for a while already, returning to the scene of the crime isn't a good idea for you."
The young Bruce stepped out of the darkness, wearing his old-school uniform, the blue and gray one he wasn't too fond of.
"Who are you?" The man clutched his injured wrist, terrified as he looked at him, seeing only the figure of a Bat in his eyes.
"I'm here to help." Bruce coldly replied, the man was already frightened enough, he judged that the rest of what he would say would be the truth.
"You think like those cops that I killed my father, right?!"
"No, we are different." Batman simply denied, the man's fearful demeanor wouldn't soften him: "Your father was already dead, you just pulled out the dagger from his chest, leaving your fingerprints on it."
"I didn't kill him, I saw a Black Shadow outside the window at the time! I wanted to save my father."
Batman said nothing, just gradually approached the window. When a human heart is pierced, perhaps one could live for a few more seconds if the dagger isn't pulled out, but once it's removed, there would be heavy bleeding, leading to instant death.
But this man clearly didn't have the courage to kill his father. This knowledge wasn't necessary to say.
Batman approached the glass, which was covered with all sorts of dense bloodstains, seemingly forming a strange pattern.
"It's the birds, they often crash into this window out of nowhere." The man answered Batman's confusion.
"These bloodstains, there's something odd about them."
................
"These bloodstains aren't right." Bruce on the sofa rubbed his temples, stopped turning the pages, the scene frozen on that window.
"There's nothing wrong, Grandpa, keep telling the story, there's always bloodstains there anyway."
His granddaughter Janet swayed her body, whining to him.
He looked at her kindly, smiled, and continued to flip through the book.
But the story changed, he saw the Destruction of Earth, himself wearing a Beast Hide apron, standing on a hillside.
Below the hill were a group of natives wearing Bat headdresses fighting with a group dressed like birds, more precisely, it was a War.
A strange white-haired woman appeared behind him, explaining that this was his Origin.
This was the epic Battle between birds and the Bats, a combat spanning human history, where the Bats would wield Strange metal to defeat the birds.
Birds symbolized reincarnation, while the Bats would end this cycle.
"This is all fake."
The Beast Hide on Bruce's body suddenly turned into a Bat Suit, and he watched as the people from the Bat Tribe bowed to him devoutly, it was clear, but his reason knew it was all fake.
He seemed to remember that he was trapped somewhere, he needed to find a way out.
..............
The pages in his hand turned again, and the story returned to Gotham.
Yes, it was still that same case, turns out the murderer was the deceased's partner, who framed the son after killing the father, so the chemical company could be his alone.
At this moment in the illustrations, Batman and Gordon were trapped under a huge glass dome descending from the sky, with the killer planning to vacuum the air inside to suffocate them.
Batman took out his Bat diamond glass cutter and shattered the dome, while the fat killer climbed up a ladder, trying to escape.
Bruce pursued him, but beside the upward ladder, there suddenly appeared another ladder leading downward.
....................
"I don't want to tell this story anymore, Janet."
"Why, Grandpa?"
"I have to find the way up, or a window..."
"No, Grandpa, you have to climb down that ladder, now!"