Mary followed him down in silence and looked in awe and surprise at the many mementoes and costumes associated with the Batmen who had made Gotham a legendary city to live in. Then she looked at a video screen and saw signs of a fight, apparently from the POV of someone who had a video link to the Batcomputer’s video screen.

“Wayne! You back yet. I’m just about done here. Might as well send Barbara’s team for the biggest pick-up operation in years.”

“That’s Terry!” said Mary.

“You’ve done well, McGinnis. Wrap them up and take the rest of the day off,” said Bruce.

“We need to talk,” said Mary.

They went back upstairs and sat down again. As Bruce explained all that had gone on in the new Batman’s career, and how it had started, he found that Mary was taking it all in, responding to everything he said with a strange new pride in her son, but looking off to the side. In fact, she was looking at the picture of a young Bruce Wayne, and her questions were moving away from Terry’s activities, to more personal questions about how being Batman had affected Bruce.

“So you never had a personal ongoing relationship?”

“No.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Maybe I didn’t deserve one. Look what I did to Dick and Barbara.”

“They could have salvaged that, and she might never have become the Commissioner who gave Terry a chance in his new role,” said Mary, “I wasn’t wild about it for the first few minutes of discovering it down there, but it does fill in some gaps about his behaviour that have bothered me for a while. Bruce, you were so handsome, and such a caring man. It’s not right that a man should let all that go to waste and devote all the attention of his youth to spending time in combat with the worst criminals of Gotham.”

“I was always saying I’d get crime under control, and then it would be different. But it never happened.”

“I … don’t think I’ll ever stop wishing we’d been the same age,” said Mary, “You’re practically the father Terry doesn’t have, and that portrait will haunt me forever. But then, even if you could restore your youth, you’d just pick up the suit and go out and fight crooks with Terry, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe one lifetime of that was enough,” said Bruce, “Maybe I could let go. More than that, I could restore my youth.”

He began to tell her the strange story of Ras Al Gul and Talia.

“They’re both dead now, along with all their followers. Many were defeated and killed, and a few who remained went over to join Kobra,” said Bruce, “But Terry, I and one other person on earth know of the locations of the Lazarus pits that restored their youth from time to time. I could be the young and available Bruce Wayne you wanted, but I’d need help to get to the pit, and to use it too. Will you trust me and give me time?”

“I guess I’ll need to use the time to explain our … connection to Terry,” said Mary.

Bruce showed her to the door and then went down to the Batcave and contacted the Justice League Unlimited. Soon he was joined at Wayne Manor by a very tall woman who covered most of her body in a large trench coat and wore a veil.

“You’re the only one who can do it,” said Bruce.

“I know I am,” said Barda, “I’ve done it once before, for myself.”

They looked back in their minds, to decades earlier. Big Barda and her husband Scott Free aka Mr Miracle had come from alien worlds called Apokolips and New Genesis, where they had been born in a low population race of people with bodies that never aged beyond adulthood and often had great powers. For a time they had mistaken themselves for gods, but there was only one real God, and Barda had long since discarded any nonesuch title for herself.