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The city of Gotham is crime-ridden and dirty and overpopulated, but more importantly, it is strange .
Not because it doesn’t have what every other city does, it has a bustling market, it has its hedge witches and it’s potion sellers. Its slums and its townhouses, it has a river that will drown you if you stare too hard and a forest where it’s fae dance in the moonlight, and it has its crime. These are staples of every city. These do not explain why Gothamites duck when shadows pass overhead or clutch their children tightly at night.
No, Gotham City is strange because it has a dragon.
This is rare. Dragons are normally ancient and powerful creatures, rarely settling down in a city. But when they do, they often choose cities like Gotham: dark, gloomy, and overcast.
Now, this in and of itself is no cause for alarm. Dragons are secluded creatures, rarely leaving the safety of their caves and their hordes. And in fact, Gotham has had dragons, before, but they flew off one day and never returned, maybe ten years before all the trouble started. They lived in the castle about an hour’s walk from the city proper, rarely ever sighted. They sent their immortal servant Alfred Pennyworth into the city to gather any supplies they needed, and sometimes, if you were close to the castle, you could hear a quiet rumbling.
The castle itself is quite a sight. A large, Gothic structure, it’s intimidating, and in a strategic position on top of a hill, surrounded by an imposing dark forest. If you were to walk through this forest, you would quickly be unsettled by what appears to be glowing eyes in trees, and deep rumbling noises. Few attempt the journey, and the only person who seems happy to traverse back and forth regularly is Alfred Pennyworth, though his qualifying as a person is certainly a subject of debate. And, to be fair, nobody ever sees him make the trek, he just seems to simply be where he wants when he wants.
When Gotham’s dragons flew off, years ago, the city believed the old castle empty. But it became apparent that the dragons had left behind a hatchling when Alfred Pennyworth kept coming into town for supplies.
The servant is an old man and has been for as long as anyone can remember. He is Alfred Pennyworth or Mister Pennyworth , never just Alfred . Though he’s lived in Gotham for quite some time, he never managed to assimilate his accent, and instead talks in the lilting tones of Old Worlders. He is the city's only source of information about the dragon, so though his eyes are a bit too luminescent for most people’s comfort, and his limbs are a bit too long to be natural, Gothamites still often approach him to ask how the dragon is.
“Master Bruce is fine, thank you,” is his constant response. Nobody ever asks what they really mean to ask, and he never answers the unspoken question.
Gotham’s dragon, there’s only one, now, starts being trouble maybe seven years after his sires disappear. Luckily, it seems he only targets the criminals, but this is enough to send the city into anxiety. Murderers will be found set alight in their own bed, slave traders will find their wares running away in the middle of the night, evil witches will be found with only their bones left. Nobody ever sees the dragon in its entirety and lives to tell about it, but they see enough: a shadow swooping above the clouds, a glowing blue eye from a dark alley, a deep growl coming from the forest.
Practically, the difference is slight. Gotham is a large city, full of the evils that spring from having large amounts of people close together. There are enough criminals that the dragon could feast thrice a day for twenty years, and the dragon doesn’t come into the town every day or even every month. It doesn’t stop most criminals, but it does make them think twice.
Alfred Pennyworth never mentions the matter, though he’s asked time and time again.
All of this is not alarming. Strange, yes, but this is not the worst thing that has happened in the city, and it’s rather helpful, actually. Most of the criminals would be headed to the pyre anyway, so it’s just… expediting the process.
But one day, eight-year-old Richard Grayson disappears.
***
Dick arrived in Gotham with the circus, smiling, laughing, body bending and twisting in ways that should not be possible. But after one show he is parentless and left to the care of Gotham’s many orphanages.
He is, well, he’s more noteworthy than your average orphan, but the situation is more sad than sinister. It’s an unfortunate accident, nothing more.
But, Alfred Pennyworth attends the show. His eyes track the little boy as he flies through the air. His presence is unsettling, and the people around him give him a wide berth, but by the time the Graysons slam into the ground he’s just another face in the crowd. And by the time the constable leads the shaking, crying child away, he is all but forgotten.
At least, until Alfred Pennyworth shows up at the orphanage little Dick Grayson is living in.
He asks to take young Dick Grayson on a walk. He doesn’t wait for a response, just walks over to Dick’s cot and holds out his hand. The smile on his face is likely supposed to be comforting, but on his face, it looks just a tad too wide.
Dick Grayson stares at his hand, mistrustful, but before anyone can stop him, he jumps up, chirps, “Okay,” and grabs Alfred Pennyworth’s hand.
The Gothamites watch, stunned and helpless, as Alfred Pennyworth leads the boy into the forest. The other orphans demand to go after him, but the orphan caretaker staunchly refuses.
Dick Grayson walks back alone two hours later, a wide smile on his face. The city gathers around him, asks what he saw, who he talked to, but he just smiles and doesn’t tell anyone. Come nightfall, he’s returned to grieving.
For a week, Alfred Pennyworth comes to him, takes him into the forest, for lengthier and lengthier time periods. By the end of the week, he spends nearly the whole day in the forest. When he’s not in the forest, he sits by the window in the orphanage, and stares out at the trees, smiling fondly. He doesn’t eat, rarely sleeps. He stops crying after two days. He watches the fireplace instead, entranced by the flames.
When he does sleep, he clutches at a pitch-black scale that’s about the size of his head. It’s always gone when he wakes up. He never has nightmares.
The townspeople start giving him a wide berth. He just smiles sweetly. You’d think him daft, if not for the unnatural sharpness in his eyes, the way the blue crystallizes over time.
After a week, Dick’s back to doing flips and tricks. He smiles and laughs, and his fellow orphans can’t help but laugh with him. In the middle of the street, he pulls a little girl half his age into a bouncing dance, to the terror of her mother. He giggles and smiles and presses a kiss to the girl’s cheek. He drives the orphanage keeper insane, flipping off roofs and whatnot. He always responds to reprimands and taunts with that odd little smile.
Then he flips straight into the forest and doesn’t come back out.
The city buzzes with the news. In the city Council, they talk of storming the castle, but what can they do? Dick Grayson is gone, lost to the maw of the dragon, and to investigate would surely be a death sentence.
Alfred Pennyworth comes back, without Dick. He goes shopping, buys more human foods than before. Gothamites don’t approach him for a while, but after a year, the orphan keeper walks up and asks, “How’s Dick?”
Alfred Pennyworth smiles, too wide. “Master Dick is fine, thank you.”
And that’s that.
About two years afterward, Sheriff Gordon’s daughter starts to act up.
Barbara becomes a recluse, spending daylight hours staring at the forest. Though she wears more and more layers, she constantly complains about the cold. Her gaze becomes sharp, her red hair deepens its color until the red is hard to look at. She starts to know things she shouldn’t, hear conversations she wasn’t present for. Dick Grayson’s name brings a smile to her face, and she can be seen talking with Alfred Pennyworth early in the morning some days.
She never leaves, not permanently, at least. But she’s never really there, either. Her father, Sheriff Gordon, never mentions the odd behavior, allows Barbara to go where she pleases. When anyone mentions Barbara to him, he responds, “Oh, Babs? She’s fine.” And sure enough, she always returns to him. That seems to be enough for the Sheriff.
***
Five years after Dick leaves, ten-year-old Jason Todd climbs into a manhole and doesn’t climb out the same.
It was a dare. Jason had been orphaned years before, or good as. Street rats group together, and one day Jason and some other homeless boys run past a manhole in the forest, not so far from the city that they might fall prey to the fae, but deep enough to inspire the troublemaking instincts young boys in packs have.
“I heard,” one boy says, “that the dragon keeps some of his gold in there!”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Jason flatly. “You’re so stupid, Brent.”
The boy, who is not important nor smart, puffs up. “Oh yeah? Well, why don’t you go look in it, then? Since you’re so smart.”
The boys start to chant Jason’s name. He looks apprehensive. They’ve heard stories of the dragon, how he stole Dick Grayson years ago, but time makes all legends less scary. And the dragon has been quiet since then, excepting the occasional trip into the city to burn a criminal or two. Most people have gone back to being nervous, but not afraid, of Alfred Pennyworth. So when the boys start to taunt Jason with calls of “Chicken!” he straightens up and scowls.
“Alright, alright, you numbnuts,” Jason says. “I’ll do it. And when I do, you gotta get me… a new book.”
“Fine, whatever,” the boy says, confident Jason won’t climb down the hole. “I’ll get your nerd book.”
Jason looks at the manhole with anxious blue eyes. Brave boy that he is, he sits down, puts one foot and then the next into the hole. “It’s… warm,” he comments nervously when his hands meet the soil.
“Chicken,” one boy sneers. Jason scowls.
“Fuck you, Will,” he snarls, then slides his whole body into the hole.
A minute passes. Five. Ten. Jason doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t scream or cry out, but he doesn’t come out, either.
The boys start to get nervous. After thirty minutes, they begin to talk about what must’ve happened to him. After two hours, the boys that remain are streaking away from the hole that swallowed Jason.
The constable rides to the hole five hours later, to see Jason Todd unharmed, sitting serenely by the hole.
“Hi,” says Jason.
He is given a ride back to town and goes back to his friends, who tease him, relieved. All is right again.
But he’s… different, now, than when he climbed in the hole.
He begins to smell like smoke, and takes up cigars. He becomes prone to mood switches, going from unnaturally serene to sudden bursts of anger. He gets into fights, and always emerges victorious. When he’s won, he streaks his opponent’s blood under his eyes in a gruesome victory ritual. He goes “hunting” in the forest, and doesn’t come out for hours or with any food. When asked, he shrugs and says he’s a bad catch. Despite this, Jason starts to eat much more meat, but nobody ever seems to catch him cooking it. In fact, the only thing he ever does with fire is stare into it, for hours on end. His eyes get brighter as time goes on, his smirk sharper.
Jason shows up one night when a wagon thief is put on the pyre. He watches the scene with eerie fascination, not tearing his eyes away until there is nothing but smoldering remains.
The last anyone sees of Jason Todd is when, one night, a baker finds him on the roof, staring up at the night sky.
“What are you doing up there?” the baker asks, annoyed.
Jason smiles. “Missing home,” he says, not taking his eyes off the sky.
“Go home then, and stop bothering me. I’ll call the constable,” the baker threatens.
Jason doesn’t answer, but when the constable shows up five minutes later, the boy is by the forest. He sticks his tongue out, then goes sprinting into the trees, laughing playfully.
They never see him again.
They don’t blame the dragon, not at first. There are only too many ways for a young boy to go missing in the forest. Sad as it is, a boy going missing in the foliage is just another thing for parents to whisper ominously when their unruly children turn their eyes toward the treeline. The fae, they say. The gargoyles, the witches, the slavers.
The event relights the fear of the forest in the city, but, ultimately, Jason is an orphan. He doesn’t have many people that will really miss him.
Except for the bookkeeper on Salem Lane, a plump, kind woman. Jason had been a frequent visitor, and though he rarely had the coin to buy books, he would often just sit and read. He’d been her favorite customer.
“Brave boy, “ she sobs. “Maybe a bit foul-mouthed, but he had a big heart on ‘im. He didn’t deserve a fate like that.”
But no, they don’t even think to blame the dragon until two days later, when Alfred Pennyworth walks into the bookstore on Salem Lane and asks the bookkeeper what kind of books Jason Todd liked.
Stunned, the bookkeeper asks why he’s interested.
“Master Jason mentioned that he liked to read. Of course, Master Bruce can’t deny his horde anything,” Alfred Pennyworth answers primly. “The books, miss?”
Trembling with nerves and reeling at the new information, the bookkeeper leads Alfred Pennyworth to the classic literature section that she always saw Jason beeline to. Alfred Pennyworth says, “Yes, this will do quite nicely,” and grabs eight books. He overpays, leaving nearly double what the cost should be. The bookkeeper doesn’t tell him his error, mutely accepting the coins.
Alfred Pennyworth leaves, nodding at passing townspeople, and disappears into the forest.
The bookkeeper is in hysterics for the next few days. Once again, the Council starts to talk of storming the castle, but it’s deemed too risky. Besides, two orphan boys going missing is hardly cause for a siege, and best anyone can tell, the boys seem to be alive and okay. The matter is abandoned.
***
Over the next few years, things quiet down. Peace returns to the city.
But then the Drake boy starts asking dangerous questions.
Timothy Drake, the heir to the Drake fortune, is a smart little child, but he knows too much for his own good and constantly wants more . After growing bored with the dull, protected life of the aristocracy, he starts scouring every inch of Gotham for mysteries.
His parents are never home, and whenever the little boy is seen toddling alone down the streets, the townspeople whisper about the lazy elites and careless parents. How could anyone, rich or poor, let their child alone on the streets? they say. Tim never seems to notice, or if he does, he never seems to mind.
Sometimes he’s not alone, of course, little Stephanie Brown takes a liking to the boy and walks around with him, never looking with him for mysteries, just chattering away to her friend.
When the boy turns nine, he finds his mystery in the dragon.
Timothy doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of taboo, and quickly grows frustrated with the non-answers he receives. “But why? ” he insists, and never gets a satisfactory answer. He craves knowledge , craves an explanation. The fae take children because they need the blood, the witches take children because they’ve made a pact with the underworld, but what use does a dragon have for two little orphan boys that he won’t eat?
Tired of being shushed and ignored, one day Timothy walks up to Alfred Pennyworth when he’s buying meat at the butcher’s stall in the market.
The people make themselves scarce when Alfred Pennyworth comes into town, and the nearest person that isn’t a vender is twenty feet away. Timothy appears to be shaking, he’s no stranger to the legends and cautionary tales of the dragon and its servant, but he marches up to Alfred Pennyworth and demands, “What did you do to those boys?”
Alfred Pennyworth turns to look at the little Drake boy. He’s much taller than Tim, and he practically looms over him. He says nothing, but he raises one perfect eyebrow.
He doesn’t answer, and Timothy doesn’t ask again. The boy’s expression is stricken. Alfred Pennyworth buys his meat, then walks back into the forest. Timothy stares after him even after the man disappears into the trees.
After that encounter, Timothy becomes even more obsessed with Gotham’s dragon. He can occasionally be found on the outskirts of town, looking at the forest with a determined expression. He gets bags under his eyes, but his blue gaze seems to be alight with some kind of glow, as if he’s found something dear he lost. His gaze sharpens, until people find themselves avoiding his eyes. He goes to bookstores, looking for books about dragons and stares at the illustrations for hours, tracing each detailed line.
Barbara Gordon visits his house, once, and leaves with a brilliant smile few have ever seen grace her lovely features. Tim spends the rest of the day on the roof, just watching them all.
Now, when Tim walks about town, the Gothamites don’t talk about how sad it is that his parents have left him. They whisper about the dragon and how it poisons lonely little boys’ minds.
After a month of this, Stephanie Brown goes tearing through town, shouting, “He’s gone! Tim’s gone!” until the constable catches her and makes her explain.
Guiltily, she admits she knew that Tim was going into the forest at night, looking for the dragon, but she swears up and down she didn’t actually think he would find it.
But he did, and every day he would tell her of the wonderful dragon, until one day he sighed, “I’d like to live with him forever,” and Stephanie freaked out. She tried to keep him inside, even going so far as to lock Tim in a closet , but the next morning she returned to find a busted door and no Tim.
This is a problem. One, Tim Drake’s parents are still alive, apathetic as they may be. The Drakes return to Gotham, kick up enough fuss to push the Council to take action (and leave again).
Stephanie is distraught for days, until one day when she appears with her mother in the square, totally at peace. When someone asks after her search for Tim, she says mildly, “He is where he needs to be.”
When she smiles, her teeth are a bit too sharp, eyes a bit too bright. People start giving her the wide space they give Alfred Pennyworth, but she never seems to mind. She, too, begins to loiter a bit too close to the forest, laughs at things everyone else can’t hear. Sometimes, Alfred Pennyworth will walk up to her door, knock politely, and escort her into the forest. But she always comes back, even days after she left. Her mother is powerless to stop her.
Two, the third disappearance, this time of a high-profile boy, is cause for major alarm. If the rich aren’t safe, who is? Gothamites rich and poor alike cry to the Council to take action, this time, too loud to be ignored.
Finally, a decision is made. Gotham City Council reaches out to a group of assassins, knights, and mercenaries, offering a reward for anyone who can slay the dragon.
All are unsuccessful. Most never return, and if they do, it’s with a promise to never approach the dragon’s castle again. All except Talia al Ghul, the assassin from the desert lands, who goes up and comes back down completely unharmed, with a glowing smirk on her face and knowing in her eyes. She denies ever meeting the dragon.
Alfred Pennyworth never mentions it, even when scared parents clutch their children at his arrival and insults are hurled at him. Though he is not afraid of them, they are afraid of him. Nobody denies him entrance to their shop, and not even the bravest of boys throw anything at him.
Young boys get a curfew, and when the dragon’s shadow appears in the clouds, parents lock their little boys inside.
Even so, Gotham still holds onto its beauty and its wonderful quirks. After a few months of failure to kill the dragon, the city settles.
***
A girl begins to dance in the city squares.
She chooses a different one each night, seemingly random, but when the squares are less full than usual, she will slip from an alley and begin to dance to music only she can hear.
Nobody knows her name, where she’s from, or why she dances. She never speaks, not even when she is prompted. People wrote her off as a mute and contend themselves to watching her ethereal, utterly silent movements. She’s about as old as Jason should be, had he had the chance to grow.
Alfred Pennyworth sees her dance, one day. He’s buying clothes, and when his too-sharp eyes land on the girl he stops, interested. He walks over, and the crowd in the square parts for him, until it’s only him and the girl in a ten-foot radius.
She stops, looks at him openly. When she’s still, the crowd can make out scars on her body. She tilts her head, and an unspoken conversation passes between them. Alfred Pennyworth nods, sharp, and pulls out two gold coins from nowhere. She accepts them, grinning, and speaks for the first time: “Thank you,” she says simply. Alfred Pennyworth nods.
The crowd watches in horror. They know what happens when Alfred Pennyworth talks to solitary children.
The girl begins looking up at the sky while she dances. Stephanie Brown appears one day in the square she’s dancing in, and watches the girl with knowing eyes. She comes back every day, sometimes wrapping the mystery girl in a hug, sometimes just staring with that too-sharp smile.
The mystery girl begins to giggle. When she’s dancing, it rolls out of her like bells chiming. She becomes very ragged, though she still moves with that slow grace. She climbs buildings to dance on the roof, and blows kisses to the sky. She begins to avoid people, smiles at the forest, the accursed forest. She spins too fast, jumps too high, walks too quiet. Her blue eyes grow sharper by the day.
The city watches her. They know how this goes. Worry rolls in the air: it has only been a few months since Timothy’s disappearance. Surely the dragon won’t take her now. And doesn’t the dragon only take boys? Mystery girl is clearly no boy. Surely the dragon will not take her. It’s too early, too odd. They had the dragon figured out.
It doesn’t matter, in the end.
One day, she stands in the middle of the most crowded street she can find, and whispers, “Goodbye.” Though she said the word quietly, the whole street hears it.
And that night, she’s dancing in an abandoned square, empty but for the houses and tenements around her, when a large, dark shape descends from the sky, instantly obscuring her from sight. Her chiming laugh is cut off abruptly, and then both the shape and the girl are gone in seconds.
Gothamites hurry out of their doors, straining to catch sight of the dragon, but no luck; it’s already in the clouds. In no time at all, the plaza is reduced to hysteria.
She, predictably, does not return. Stephanie tells anyone who asks after the girl that “Cass is where she needs to be.” Her teeth flash when she beams, and the townspeople don’t ask again.
***
More knights, more mercenaries, more assassins. More failures. Talia al Ghul returns, but this time she has a little boy, though she had never mentioned a child during her time in Gotham before. She leaves him in town and goes back to the League of Assassins.
The boy is a peculiarity. His name is Damian, and he’s unpleasant and has a superiority complex the size of a troll. Any questions he receives are ignored or rebuffed with insults or threats. He keeps mentioning his father, though nobody knows who that may be, and Damian is unwilling to say. Stephanie says he’s five, but he’s wily for a five-year-old, and contrary to boot. He carries a sword nearly as tall as he is, and a cloak that obscures most of his body. The only people he talks to without total antagonism are Stephanie Brown and Alfred Pennyworth, and he ignores any and all warnings against talking to the dragon’s servants. Whenever one of those two is about town, Damian can be found trailing after them, scowling in stark contrast to Alfred Pennyworth or Stephanie Brown’s smiles.
Damian, though, does not begin to act strangely after meeting Alfred Pennyworth. He already is strange.
His blue-green eyes do not get brighter, because they are already too bright. His teeth do not become too sharp, because they are already pointed. He does not gravitate toward the shadows, because he already lives in them. He does not stop eating, because he seemingly never really needs to. He does not study drawings of dragons, he makes his own. He does not laugh or flip or dance, but the city looks at him and knows that if he were to jump, it would be too high to be normal.
When Damian does eat, he goes for meats. One day, when he’s buying food with Stephanie Brown, the butcher works up the nerve to ask him why he’s in Gotham. Damian snarls, but pauses at the placating hand Stephanie Brown puts on his shoulder. She smiles, too wide. “He’s going to live with his father,” she says cheerily, placing down too many coins.
“The dragon?” the butcher whispers.
Neither Stephanie Brown nor Damian answers. They don’t need to. Damian simply rolls his eyes.
The next day, a boy throws a stone at Damian, and the little boy pounces on him. He beats the boy half-dead, though his assailant is nearly thrice his age. The only reason the older boy lives is because Stephanie Brown walks calmly between the astounded crowd and says, “Damian,” very quietly.
He looks up from his prey, snarling. Stephanie Brown does not flinch. “I think you should go home now,” she says crossly. Her voice is full of steel.
Damian scowls, but gets off the poor boy. He doesn’t spare a glance at the gathered crowd, but they still gasp fearfully when they see that his eyes have narrowed into slits. He fixes his cloak and stalks straight to the edge of the forest where Alfred Pennyworth is waiting. Then, without a backward glance, Damian and Alfred Pennyworth disappear into the forest and don’t come back.
The crowd stares after them, but nobody makes a move to follow. Time seems to freeze until Stephanie Brown calmly calls for a medic.
***
The City Council gets really desperate, now. They throw every dragon killer they can find at the castle.
All of them fail.
One day, they send thirteen-year-old Duke Thomas with one of the knights. His family hails from the sprites, and he can manipulate light as if it were ribbon. The Council hopes that, because he can use the light, he will last longer in the darkness of the forest. His parents beg the council to reconsider, but when they end up in the medic’s care in magical insanity, courtesy of the dark wizard Jester, Duke heads off on his quest, crying but determined.
He and the knight enter the forest. Three days later, Duke returns. The knight doesn’t.
When asked what happened, he shrugs. “We didn’t see any monsters.”
Nobody asked about monsters.
Stephanie Brown grins at him like they’re old friends when he emerges from the forest, and Duke begins to hang around her. They can often be found with heads bent together in parks or on roofs, but if one listens to the quiet conversations they have, it sounds like gibberish: clicks and whistles and guttural groans that no human mouth should be able to make. Duke’s old friends slip away quietly, and he lets them. Duke had a strong light power when he went to the castle, but when he comes back, he literally glows. People find themselves shielding their eyes when he walks into a room. He stares at the blacksmith’s forge for hours, but never does sweat grace his golden-brown skin.
But he doesn’t disappear into the forest, not permanently, not yet. He vanishes in the night, but in the daytime, he always visits the medic, where his parents waste away in their insanity.
And waste away they do. The Thomases spiral and rant and scream and shake, and even the most powerful magic user finally declares their condition to be hopeless.
Duke stares at his parents every day for an hour or so, but he never seems to really see them, and he never hears the insults they hurl at him in their madness.
As the months go by, their condition worsens.
Then one night, the medic’s workshop catches fire.
Those in their right mind rush out, but those infected by Jester’s madness refuse to be moved. They just laugh and laugh and laugh, and dance when the flames reach them until they burn or choke.
The authorities arrive too late, and are about to call their losses when Duke Thomas appears at the edge of the crowd. The people part for him; they always step aside for the dragon’s chosen. He walks calmly into the fire. The flames lick at him but don’t burn. A minute later, he emerges clutching the burned, near-dead body of his mother, who is still trying with all her might to climb back into the fire. He does not go back for his father.
Duke lays her on the ground and rocks her back and forth, whispering reassurances. Soon English lapses out and he clicks away in that strange, nothing language. He glows, bright against the dark of the night. He glows brighter than the fire behind him.
Stephanie Brown and Alfred Pennyworth materialize at the edge of the crowd. Their expressions are somber, but Alfred Pennyworth does not hesitate when he walks up to the boy and silently hands him a knife.
“I love you,” Duke whispers, forcing his mother’s eyes to meet his gaze as he presses a kiss to her forehead, while his other hand plunges the knife into his mother’s chest.
Injured as she is, her body goes limp near-instantly. Duke brushes her cheek with reverence, and lays her to rest.
Alfred Pennyworth’s hand comes down on his shoulder. “Master Duke?” he inquires quietly.
Duke nods, wiping a tear absently. “I need to grab something,” he says, voice thick. He gets up and walks out of the plaza. Alfred Pennyworth does not follow.
Stephanie Brown watches, sadly, as he passes her. A woman asks, frightened, where he’s going.
The blonde doesn’t turn from the burned and bleeding corpse when she says, “He’s going to be with his brothers.”
When Duke returns, he has a bag hanging off his shoulders. Stephanie catches his face, wipes a tear off his cheek. “Don’t cry,” she tells him. “You can be with them now.”
Duke nods like that’s encouraging, but more tears slide down his face. Alfred walks up beside him, and Duke follows him silently into the forest, exactly one year after he went into that cursed castle.
None of the dragon’s horde is ever seen again, but that doesn’t mean they‘re gone, and Gotham learns this in a big way. Shortly after Duke’s disappearance, signs of the lost children start to pop up.
Dick Grayson’s laugh, though deeper now, is near identical, even when it’s coming from the forest at odd hours. Buildings get streaked with blood, as if someone had run their bloody hands along them like he used to drag it across his cheeks. “But why ,” Timothy asks, even though they never see him, and his voice is less inquisitive and more playful. In town squares, sometimes, out of the corner of your eyes, you can catch a glance of a figure dancing, but she’s never there when you look dead on. When the dragon flies overhead, there is another, smaller figure trailing behind it, still always shrouded in cloud cover, and sometimes empty, dark alleyways will snarl at you. In the middle of the night, a bright light will sometimes pass by the windows, but never slow enough to be seen fully.
The Council begs more warriors to attempt to kill the dragon. None succeed. Stephanie Brown (never just Stephanie, not anymore) and Alfred Pennyworth continue to smile and smile and smile. Nobody has seen Barbara Gordon in years, but the Sheriff still says she’s fine.
Lonely children are encouraged to find someone, quickly, or be spelled by the dragon. The abductions, that’s what they call them, stop.
Then one day, a knight named Clark Kent walks into Gotham.