Each different story contained one main similarity. They all tell of a Batman who, regardless of what he looked like or what he did, was an unstoppable force of good. In every story, Batman dies having never given up, never backing down. And no matter how his death occurs - be it tragic and explosive or quiet and unnoticed, he never stops protecting the innocent. He is the Batman and the Batman never compromises, doesn't know the meaning of the word 'quit.' He fights until he dies, and of course, that's all that ever could come of this - death. There is no other out. But until then the war will rage on. That is the legend of Batman.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce spies a door at the back end of the parlor that was not there before. He feels the need to step through that door and as he does so he finds himself surrounded by blackness on the other side. Suddenly it becomes clear to him what is going on. He is calm and serene, his life has been replaying before his eyes (even if it's never quite his life). This is an N.D.E. - a Near Death Experience. Bruce recalls that in an NDE you often times find yourself greeted by loved ones who had passed on before you. And his female companion is just that, a loved one who has long since passed on - his mother.

But Bruce doesn't believe in an afterlife. He doesn't believe in some great eternal reward for his actions. So is this entire event simply playing out in his oxygen deprived brain as it slowly shuts down? Or is this all real? Does it matter? Standing in a single spotlight amidst the black constellation of his mind, Bruce embraces his mother. She takes him back to the very beginning - a beginning that remains true regardless of how the ending might change. She shows Bruce the perfect happiness of his childhood, sitting on her lap and reading the "Goodnight" book. He re-lives the night his parents were taken from him by Joe Chill. And he begins to realize that in the end, Bruce's true reward for being Batman is getting to be Batman. Forever.

"Okay, this is my near death experience. Am I going to come around? Wake up on a riverbank, or in a hospital bed?" Bruce asks his mother.

"I don't believe so, my darling. Not this time....You're done now, Bruce, this time. You can stop fighting now... just for a few more years... it's over."

And with that Bruce Wayne says 'goodnight' - just like in that beloved child's storybook from so long ago. And with the final goodbye said, this story ends as so many stories had begun, with the Bat-Symbol. But is this the end? Or just another beginning? As the Bat-Symbol lingers in the Gotham night sky it slowly becomes something else, something becoming a welcoming of another sort. The black wings of the Bat morph into the reaching hands of a doctor in a delivery room somewhere in Gotham. And it's there that Bruce Wayne is re-united with his mother once again as the newborn child who would one day become the Caped Crusader draws his first breath.