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The multiverse is collapsing around him, and Duke Thomas is running.
He stays in each world just long enough to see it crumble, to see the ground split apart and to see heroes fall left and right. He stays just long enough to open his eyes, blazing gold, and see what came before.
Worlds full of heroes, who saved the day, who tried. Even in worlds that were already falling apart, there were heroes to fill it with hope.
Duke holds onto that.
Because there is a future for the multiverse. He knows it.
These powers are new but he feels like they’ve been simmering beneath his skin his entire life, waiting for him to use them. He barely knows how to use them, he replays the same trick he did at the Batcave over and over and sees and jumps into other Earths, and he knows he should be able to do more. That’s what this armor and cloak is for, it’s supposed to help him with those powers.
(They were given to him in the last seconds of his Earth. A man appeared and told him it was his lineage, it was his power to wield, and he must survive. Heart thudding in his ears, Duke accepted. Heart thudding in his ears, he escaped the fall of his Earth.
Heart thudding in his ears, Duke abandoned the only home he’d ever known.)
But he’s never able to rest long enough to figure these powers out. He would love to stay. He’s run through so many Gothams, all different but the same, always the city of a million possibilities. Always the city of death, but now, sans the rebirth.
He can’t do anything but run. He almost wishes he wouldn’t, but without him, continuing to survive like was told, how does the multiverse stand a chance?
He’s the Last Monitor. That’s what he was told. What a Monitor does is watch.
Duke’s going to do more than watch.
He’s going to bring back the damn multiverse, he’s going to save it, even if it kills him.
There’s another presence with him as he jumps from world to world. He can feel it in the air, in the empty space where worlds were, there is someone watching over them all. He wonders if this presence is trapped with him, doomed to see and never to act.
He takes a moment to breathe in this next world, one with an unfamiliar jungle in place of Gotham. Glancing up towards the sky, Duke calls out.
“Whoever you are… I’m gonna need your help, you know. Saving the multiverse isn’t something I can do alone.” He would if he had to, but he’s learned, from his time with the Robin movement and from his limited time working with Batman. Together, they are stronger. Together, there is nothing heroes can’t defeat.
Duke swallows as he recalls the attempt made to defeat Barbatos. “Together,” they had said.
No, he has to just trust this will work. Trust is the only thing he has right now.
“Hey!” he shouts. “I know you’re out there. I know you’re—”
And the ground begins to shake.
He leaves this Earth, and onto the next, muttering, “C’mon, other Monitor, I know you’re out there. Please. We need to work together .”
This is a long stretch, with only seconds in each world. It’s like clockwork. He tumbles onto shaky ground and takes the time to open another interdimensional door. He does it without thinking.
He doesn’t even know how long he’s been doing this. It feels like it’s been forever, like the sweat and the aches in his bones are chipping away at faces, Bruce, Cass, Izzy, Riko—
Duke runs straight into faces he recognizes, faces that are so clear and sharp and vivid in his memories that he could never forget.
Mom and Dad.
Mom scowls, pushing past him. Duke’s throat is suddenly clogged up. “Excuse me, sir, I don’t know what convention’s today or why you’re in our way to get there, but we really need to go find our son.”
Other-him. Who knows where other-him is, Duke knows he’s gotten into some wild things in his own universe. And he shouldn’t stay here, he has minutes at most. He doesn’t want to be near his parents when they vanish or die or worse. He doesn’t.
Tears pinprick the edge of his eyes. In one smooth motion, he pulls the golden helmet off and holds it underneath his arms. “Mom, Dad, you need to run.”
Dad’s face scrunches together in confusion, but Mom gasps softly. “You look so much like… Duke?” She cups his face, rubbing her thumb in little circles. “What happened to you? You look tired, baby bird.”
Duke tries to smile, but it disappears within a moment. He sniffles, then lets himself break down into sobs, caressed by his mother’s hand. He’s wanted this for so long, he doesn’t even know. He’s here, with his parents, and his heart has finally stopped thudding in his ears. Right here, in the middle of Gotham as normal as Gotham can be in broad daylight, his parents in front of him… he feels like he’s home again. But he can’t stay.
Unless…
His eyes widen. “Mom, Dad,” he says in low tones, “I need you to listen to me very carefully. I’m your son, but not. I’m from a different dimension. This dimension is about to collapse, and I want to take you with me.”
Mom and Dad glance at each other. They have a conversation with their eyes, like they tend to do, and Duke continues to cry with embarrassing wails and hiccups, because he misses them, he misses his Mom and Dad, this is why he has to bring them back.
“We need to find our son,” says Dad, his voice firm but kind. “If what you say is true, we don’t know you, not really. And we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but you aren’t our son. We need to find him. And then we can go.”
“Of course,” Duke exhales with shaky breath. “Go. Go quickly. I can help—”
His eyes go ablaze, and while Dad’s jaw drops, Mom only nods. Duke rummages through past moments for other-him, and there he is, tiny with springy curls, talking smack to a blond boy that seems familiar. He points past the crowds of people to where other-him was headed. “Over there.”
Mom and Dad run, but the sidewalk splits open and the skies turn red. They stand on the other side, pushing people out of the way to get to other-him.
Duke’s heartbeat kickstarts into action, and his fingers twitch, ready to open the door. “Mom! Dad!” he screams, watching them move farther and farther away. Barbatos’s shadowed claws begin to take their grip, Duke can see him in this distance. They have precious few seconds left.
“No,” he murmurs, “no, no, no, no, no.” He looks up at the sky. “Other Monitor, if you’re watching and you’re on my side, do something now. Please. Please.”
No response.
The world crumbles piece by piece, like a toppling Jenga tower in slow motion. Mom and Dad sprint towards him now, other-Duke in hand. Putting on his helmet lopsidedly, Duke tears open the door. “Please, please, please, please.”
The door begins to fizzle out. Three, and two, and Duke can’t risk it he’s the multiverse’s only hope. He jumps to the other side. Mom and Dad’s eyes are huge, other-him whimpering into their shoulders. They leap for the door—
—and the door closes. “No, no, no!” Duke reaches for his power, replaying the scene, and. And there their faces are, terrified. Frozen. The last things Duke saw of them.
He falls to his knees, and vaguely, he notes the sand underneath him, digging into his legs. “No,” he says again, but it comes out as a gurgle.
He begins to sink into the sand, and like clockwork, he opens the door to the next Earth. He drags himself into it.
He missed his chance to save someone, anyone. He missed a chance to save his parents. His parents.
And he’s either alone out here, his thoughts of there being someone else, watching, was a delusion of too many minutes or hours or days or weeks or years spent running for his life, or that someone doesn’t care. He doesn’t know which is worse.
But that means it is, in fact, completely up to Duke to save the multiverse.
He needs to keep believing that because there is no future without it. There’s a way to stop all this, there’s a way to bring back the billions, trillions of lives lost, there has to be. He sees into the past, and he sees the age of heroes. He sees Superman, talking a girl off a ledge, he sees Batman, hugging a crying child, he sees Wonder Woman, staring a villain in the eye and holding out her hand.
He sees hope.
The worlds were like that once. They can be like that again.
Duke can have his family again.
He just has to keep going.