Fandom: Batman
Pairing: Bruce Wayne & Male OC, Damian Wayne & Male OC [Platonic]
Rating: Teen
Content: Amnesia, Loss of identity, Blood and gore, Graphic violence, Injuries, Animal abuse, Semi-verbal character
Date originally written: 12th January 2022
Summary: Bruce has a lot to think about after the fight with Killer Croc.

Bruce had been hearing the whispers from Gothamites of a shadow creature that’d been stalking around the city for a while now. He’d assumed they’d been talking about him. Batman, was of course, a terrifying creature of the night, and he made sure that if ever people caught glimpses of him, it wouldn’t be enough to definitively say that it was Batman. It amped up the creep factor a lot, and it helped for Gotham and its citizens to see him less as a man and more of a myth, or a thing that simply crawled through the city’s streets like a predator.

But as the whispers continued, they eventually evolved. The shadow creature now had a name, and it’s name wasn’t Batman. People were calling it an omen, because of its habit to show up at inopportune times, or it’s so called “ability” to cause either good or bad things to happen after the individual saw it.

Bruce believed he had a new player in Gotham. He hadn’t seen this “Omen” for himself, but he needed to do more investigating, if any of these rumours were true. He’d yet to hear of anyone being hurt or killed by the shadow creature, but if it’s abilities at all including being able to cause “good” or “bad” things to happen to people, he likely either had a meta on his hands, or a magic user.

He really hoped it wasn’t a magic user.

Unfortunately, no matter how wide or far Bruce searched for evidence of this “Omen” existing, he ultimately found nothing. He couldn’t say for sure if this creature or person was real or not, but he had no choice but to keep a look out.

He continued to hear the whispers, though. And they weren’t stopping. They would continue to morph and evolve and change, and now more people in Gotham were hearing about this “Omen”. Bruce still had no evidence, and it was starting to frustrate him.

It all came to a head a month later, though, during a fight with Killer Croc.

Croc had breached containment within Arkham, supposedly helped by a few other rogues that had been planning to bust out of Arkham for months. Others had escaped during the initial breakout, and Batman would have to find them soon, but at the time of the breakout, the most important people to go after were the most dangerous. And that had been Killer Croc.

He’d told Robin not to get involved. Croc was dangerous and powerful, and more importantly, he had a taste for human flesh, and the absolute last thing Bruce had wanted was for Damian to get hurt...or worse.

However, Damian wasn’t the type to listen to orders (and Bruce was sure the kid was going to give him ten times more grey hairs than any of his other Robin’s had), and had jumped into the fray anyway.

None of it had gone well. Bruce had been waiting for backup to arrive, when Damian went after Killer Croc. Neither of them had been prepared for the absolute beating that Croc was giving them. Bruce had managed to get Damian out of the way for the most part, but he’d taken a huge beating as a result. When Nightwing eventually showed up it had been too little too late. There’d been little time to prepare an attack or wait for backup, and they had all paid the price.

Bruce tried not to remember how it felt when he helplessly watched as Killer Croc raised Damian in his clawed hand by the front of his suit, opening his jaws wide. He’d truly thought he was about to see Croc kill and eat his own son.

But something had save him. Right before Croc bit down on his son’s flesh, a shadowy creature had jumped down from the rooftops. For a split second, Bruce thought that it might’ve been Cass, but he quickly realised that it wasn’t.

He hadn’t been able to really see what the thing was until after the bloody battle. And oh how bloody the battle had been. The black and shadowy creature had fought tooth and nail with Croc, not showing an ounce of remorse as it ripped and tore through hard scaly skin. Croc had been fighting for his life.

When all was said and done, both individuals left the fight with major wounds that would need serious medical attention. Croc had been found passed out on the ground in an alleyway not too far from the original fight after he’d fled.

It was only then, that he’d gotten a decent look at the other creature. It was a black wolf with glowing white eyes, not too dissimilar to the ones in his cowl. The wolf had been incredibly large for a canine. Bruce suspected his eyes would reach to about the height of the wolf’s back. Even stranger than its size and glowing eyes, was it’s almost...fluid form. The shadows seemed to move around it, tendrils of darkness making up it’s fur and tail. It was closer to what Bruce thought demons might actually look like, if he believed them to be real.

But Bruce didn’t believe in demons. It was more likely to be a meta of some kind, a person rather than an animal.

He’d been wrong before, though.

Bruce had watched in extreme concern, while he’d been busy getting himself up off the ground, as Damian approached the shadow-wolf in question. He’d not heard what his son had said, but he’d seen the nod the creature gave in response, and then watched as it limped away, trailing blood from it’s mangled leg.

He’d went after it, limping himself as he turned the corner into the alleyway he’d watched it walk into, and stopped at the sight of...nothing. There’d been a bit of blood trailing into the alleyway from when the wolf walked in...but the blood stopped there. There was no blood going left, right, up, down, forwards or backwards. It was as if the wolf had simply...disappeared.

Bruce hadn’t liked it one bit.

Ever since that particular fight against Killer Croc, Bruce had been searching.

He now knew that Omen was a real being. Both himself and Robin had seen it with their own eyes. He knew what it looked like and he knew that it was strong enough to go up against Killer Croc.

He also knew that it was mortal. It could bleed, and it’s bones could break. He’d taken a sample of blood and ran it through a bunch of tests, though nothing had really come up. It was blood that didn’t match a single person in Gotham, let alone that of a human. He ran more tests, trying to see if perhaps this creature was a mutated dog or wolf of some kind, and those results came up with nothing as well. Bruce thought that perhaps Omen was an alien, and that was why none of his tests were coming up with anything solid.

It was confusing. He had even more questions than he’d had before, and still no answers.

More importantly, Omen hadn’t shown up since the fight with Croc. No one had seen it. Any whispers of it's existence were old stories he’d heard before, and Bruce was starting to suspect that the creature had succumbed to its wounds after the battle. Either that, or it was waiting. For what, Bruce had no idea.

There was also the fact that it was likely that this creature was sentient, and understood English. Damian had told him that he’d thanked the creature for helping him (and while Bruce was glad the boy was developing some manners, he was still incredibly wary of the shadow-wolf), and in response the creature had nodded. Bruce had seen the nod for himself, but hadn’t been sure if what he was seeing was true or accurate, given his injured state at the time. Damian had confirmed it for him, and all it did was give Bruce even more questions.

He wasn’t sure if he should hope that Omen was dead or not. On one hand, it had saved his son’s life and made it significantly easier to bring Killer Croc back into custody.

On the other hand though...he knew nearly nothing about Omen. He didn’t know it’s intentions, or what it was doing in Gotham, or why. He had no reason to trust it.

He would just have to wait and see.