we're painting the town blue.

[skywire]

i hate captcha and so do you.

Comments

[skywire]

you have no idea how many people think my love life is their business 🙄
anyway shoot

[undisclose]

What I'd like to ask isn't any of my business, either.
You don't have to answer.

[skywire]

I'll tell you if I'm uncomfortable, don't worry
I've never felt obligated to any version of you to be what I'm not or do what I don't want to
doing something silly or backwards, maybe
but I've also never followed adult you blindly
and I don't intend to start with teenage you

[undisclose]

That's reassuring. I'm not used to dealing with someone so

unreservedly loquacious.
I was beginning to wonder if you had any personal boundaries at all.
No offense.

It's about your pursuit of the man who murdered your parents.
A few things.
Which are perhaps better saved for a face-to-face conversation as opposed to text
Although frankly I prefer text as a rule

[skywire]

you're saying I talk a lot
all that private school paid off!
and I have a few, believe me, but you either don't know about them or wouldn't think to ask
and that's just fiiiine with me 😉

Whatever you're most comfortable with
I don't mind talking about what happened to my parents
it was headline news for months and even years after there would be "where are they now" pieces in the papers
the sad little gypsy boy adopted by a millionaire, you know
so I had to get used to talking about it
though you shielded me from as much of that as you could

1/2

[undisclose]

He did a decent job, apparently. I found none of the answers I was looking for when I read about you.

That's part of the reason I said I didn't mean to imply you had to reiterate what happened that night. The details I wonder about aren't public domain, at least that I know of so far.

2/2

[undisclose]

I was wondering about when you apprehended him
If there was a personal confrontation and what was said and done

Also the person who commits a crime isn't always the one who's ultimately responsible for the order to do so or for the circumstances that facilitate the order. I was wondering if your usage of the singular 'murderer' implied you considered Zucco ultimately responsible and if you're certain you managed to take down the others involved with the protection racket after his apprehension or if this was something that concerned you. If the answer to any of this is in the newspaper archives I apologize and you should feel free to refer me to that instead

But I was also wondering if after the fact you
felt any closure

[skywire]

I think it's important to explain why I was a material witness to this case
I saw Zucco cutting the wires before the show
I tried to warn people but I was just a kid and everyone was distracted getting ready
and to be honest I didn't really understand what I'd seen
so I felt personally responsible

but closure is different for everyone
I don't know if I'll ever feel at peace with what happened
but I felt like I'd fixed the problem that had killed my parents
so no one would go through what I did

after we caught him
I just wanted to keep going
I could see that Gotham had holes in it that sucked people in and hurt them
I wanted to keep fixing those
going after the entire protection racket organisation for example
I never wanted to stop

[undisclose]

I see.

[skywire]

veeeery cryptic mister Wayne 🤔🤔🤔

[undisclose]

... how he could've seen something of himself in you.
And I see some stuff about your motives/mindset more clearly, maybe.

Among other things, idk

[skywire]

liiike?

I'd genuinely like to know what your observations on this subject are
since it's basically the defining moment of my childhood
if you don't mind

[undisclose]

If it's the defining moment of your childhood then maybe you shouldn't be concerned what some random kid from another dimension thinks

[skywire]

okay for starters you're not "some random kid"
I'm not dumb enough to fall for that one and you're not dumb enough to think I would
so let's not kid ourselves
but if you really don't want to talk about it, it's fine
I just like talking to you
your observations pick up on things I missed
you have a unique perspective, you can't deny that

[undisclose]

Sure, but you still met me like 2 weeks ago. That's pretty damn random, Grayson.

I did a little reading on the bat's history, and it's similar enough to mine I guess I can overlook the whole pathological behavior thing in order to offer some speculation into his mindset at the time. That's obviously what you're fishing for.

[skywire]

lol oh man
you think I'm fishing for your perspective on Bruce?
adult Bruce?
the man who I ate breakfast with every day for over a decade??

look
you're a great kid and I love talking to you
but I never need anyone else's perspectives and speculations on big B
I have my own and I promise they're much better than yours

what I'm "fishing" for
is what you think of ME

[undisclose]

And yet despite your expressed intentions to the contrary, you've persisted in referring to us as the same person. Whatever you say, Dick. I'll take the compliment, though. It's comforting to think his motivations are beyond me.

What do I think about you, though?

Top of my head: you're smarter than you let on, more stubborn, less flippant
you're lucky you had someone there to recognize you needed a strong direction or purpose after the senseless humiliation of your parents' death so you didn't have time to introspect too deeply about the circumstances surrounding it, uh
maybe you're not as introspective as some about that sort of thing

I do think your extracurriculars and the theatricality with which you pursue them are a fitting homage to your parents' lives. I didn't know them but I'd be audacious enough to say I bet they'd like who you've become, too

Also, I look at him and then I look at you and think: martyr complex vs. Atlas personality/savior complex maybe but then again it's a fine line

Is that what you're fishing for?
I'm no good at this.

[skywire]

I do think of you as different people if that matters any
I'm not very good at expressing it I guess
he's a huge presence in my life
it tends to overshadow other things
I look at you and I see potentials and I know the outcome of a few
we're both kidding ourselves if we pretend I'm not biased but I'm trying not to push that on you too much
I may not be succeeding

are you saying I'm smarter than I look?
I was trained by the best you know ;)

and don't worry, I'm pretty introspective when it comes down to it
I've seen what not being introspective enough about your motivations and choices can do to a person
it's just another couple of things I don't discuss openly with people I don't know very well
and despite an uncanny resemblance to a certain bat, you aren't in that category
yet

wait am I the martyr or the atlas?
Jason says I have a Napoleon complex but he's just an asshole

[undisclose]

Atlas. I get the feeling if you took the night off to, say, teach somebody to jump off of rooftops and then read about a crime that'd gone down while you were busy, you'd feel guilty about it. The martyr thing could apply, too, though, idk. If you're really smarter than you look I don't have to explain why.

I guess I shouldn't pathologize everyone but I had a recent run in with some Arkham escapees and maybe the habit kind of stuck ...

[skywire]

I'm taking the comment about my looks as a compliment 💪🐦

and I think if I felt any guilt on the matter it'd be the same amount say a cop or a fireman would feel
also there's always the next night and the night after that
to hold apprehend the perpetrator and help more in other places
a lot of my job is more solving crimes already committed than preventing them from ever being done
it's not about instant gratification

out of curiosity
which escapees?
any of them uh
how do i say this
fond of comedy

[undisclose]

Well, he thinks he's funny.
Chuckles is a guy named Jerome Valeska, and we have some unfortunate history. There were a few more, too. It was an asylum-wide break out Valeska planned, actually. Happened right before I got ripped through space-time.

"Instant gratification" is an interesting way of phrasing that.

[skywire]

never heard of a Jerome Valeska
so hey that might mean you might not have to deal with him much longer
orrr that our timelines diverge in some weird other direction
interdimensional travel 🤷

how do you mean?
idk an annoyance I have with a lot of younger crime fighters is
they just want to rush in and beat up the bad guy
they don't think about the detective work or the training or the preventative measures
I'm not a methodical planner and yeah, sometimes I rush in to finish off the job
but that's only after I've done the majority of the legwork
(I mean some older vigilantes are the rush in and don't ask questions type but they're mostly terrible at it)
(don't tell big B I said that I don't want him to know I agree with him about some of his colleagues)

[undisclose]

When I've had the opportunity to prevent a crime, I've felt something more like a sense of relief than anything like gratification. I said there was a "satisfaction" to solving a mystery, but that's intellectual and after the fact. "Instant gratification" makes it sound like the confrontation itself is the motivation, and not the outcome, I guess.

Maybe that's just semantics. OR maybe that's just a reiteration of what you just said. Regardless, I won't tell the bat

[skywire]

I wouldn't second guess your instincts so much
because your observations are very astute
not just because I'm biased and trust my Bruce's
honestly I'd say you tend to analyze in a different direction than big B does
with a lot of different outcomes
it's part of why I like talking to you, kiddo
your perspective is interesting independent of who you share a name with

[undisclose]

That's kind of you to say. Recently, I've found second guessing my instincts is a useful habit.
Usually I'm not so obvious about it.

What do you mean "different direction"? What's his direction?