Batman and Robin #17

LIFE IS BUT A DREAM

After a long night of fighting crime together, Batman and Robin return to the Batcave to rest for the night, first stuffing Alfred Pennyworth's meal into their mouths as they peel off their boots. Yawning, each of the three retire to their beds for needed sleep.  Damian dreams of the submarine he once lived on with his mother Talia. Through a viewing window, he watches all of those he has faced in his life being drowned in the ocean by his hand. He is interrupted from his reverie by his other self - the one that is most loyal to his father. He explains that, now, they are Waynes first, and al Ghuls second. He is suddenly frightened when he sees that Alfred, too, is being drowned.  Damian wakes in horror and then confusion, as a live robin has managed to get into the manor and perch at the foot of his bed. Thinking it must be there to lead him somewhere, he releases it, and follows it through the mansion, riding on the back of his Great Dane Titus. They hear the ringing of the little bell that Bruce rings when he needs Alfred, but the butler claims that his father is calling for him instead. Damian and Titus find Bruce in is study, sitting in a pool of blood. With a large vampire bat draining the blood from his neck, Bruce asks Damian to join him. Again, Damian wakes up with a start.  Alfred dreams of his past, serving Thomas and Martha Wayne on the night that they took their young son Bruce to Park Row to see the Mark of Zorro. Smiling at the family's happiness, Alfred's attention is drawn away by a sound coming from the refrigerator. Opening it, he finds a tunnel leading down into the Batcave, and calls out to his charges Bruce and Damian, in case they need his help. the loud smacking sound continues as Alfred makes his way down the stairs until he sees the Joker there, standing over the dead bodies of Batman and his cohorts, having beaten them all to death with a hammer. Sternly, Alfred warns the Joker to drop the hammer, training his shotgun on the madman. The Joker dares him to fire, which Alfred gladly does. Alfred, too, wakes from his dream with a shout. At first shaken by his nightmare, he soon takes comfort in his victory, and returns to sleep.  Bruce dreams of standing beneath the sewer grate into which his mother's pearls fell after his parents were shot. Taking the program for the Mark of Zorro from the case in which he has protected it for years, he folds it into a paper boat and sails it away with the flow of the sewer water. The ghosts of his parents warn that he cannot simply hope that the darkness will sail away with that boat. Suddenly, a crashing wave of water washes them all away down the sewer and into the bay. As he rides his boat to safety, it is set upon by the villains of Gotham City, and he angrily warns them that he doesn't need them. Suddenly, though, the Joker as a white whale comes and swallows up the boat, leaving Batman to drown. As he sinks, he is saved at the last by his son, Damian. Waking, Bruce realizes the importance of the boy to his life, and sneaks into the boy's room to tuck him back in and watch him sleep.  Damian dreams again, of fighting beside his father as Robin, ever victorious, and enjoying every second of it. The night belongs to the bats, and he wouldn't have it any other way. As he and Bruce rest for a moment together, his father reminds him that this is only a dream. Damian responds that this, at least, is a dream he doesn't want to wake up from.