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The OG Max Ledger. I’ve toyed with this version of Max for a very long time, it’s the first version of her which I came up with in 2022, so it’s been a while. She’s also the oldest Max of the three main AUs and the most aligned with canon, so this chapter will be slightly longer than the other two. You have been warned.
Brief Personality
Max is quiet and very smart. She can be obsessive when there’s a problem she can’t solve (as can all versions of Max). This version is less anxious than the other two and definitely more put-together and independent. Probably because she has a few more years on them and was adopted into a stable home a lot sooner.
Backstory
Her backstory can be broken up into a few crucial events.
Birth
Scarecrow
Adoption
Bludhaven
Renaming
Bludhaven (again)
Return
Friendship is Magic
These are just the main points of her life but there’s much much more, trust. Also, it’s important to note that Max aligns in age with Tim Drake in this version. She’s about 4 months older than him.
Trigger warning for grief (that one plays a big role so seriously be warned! It specifically revolves around Jason Todd), torture, gun violence, brain damage, and child abuse. It’s not an OC if they’re not traumatized and I made this particular OC at a dark time in my life.
TL;DR for each section at the end of the chapter, I understand if you want to read that instead but I will be sad about it.
Birth
Maxine Olivia Ledger is born to Gregory and Marianna Ledger. Unfortunately, her birth is what murks Marianna, leaving Max and her two older siblings (Charlotte, 9, and Marcus, 4) to be cared for by Greg. Greg doesn’t know how to handle his grief and emotions or handle kids on his own, so he turns to alcoholism and abuse. He is resentful of Marcus, who is too soft for Greg’s own toxic macho man ideals, and Greg is especially resentful of Max, whose whole existence killed his wife. Charlotte being his favorite doesn’t mean he treats Charlotte well, though he is insistent that she is just like him. Obviously Charlotte doesn’t like this assessment and runs away when she’s 12 (Max is 4, Marcus is 8), offering to take Marcus and Marcus only with her. He refuses and she leaves. Now it’s just Max and Marcus and Greg in the Ledger household.
Scarecrow
Max and Marcus are having an all-around miserable time, but Marcus has been trying to be the best big brother he can be to Max. When Marcus is 13 and Max is 9, Scarecrow attacks the city. Greg was using Max to shoplift at the time, so the two were caught right in the middle of the attack while trying to get home. They encounter a man on fear toxin– the same man who was a cashier at the convenience store the Ledgers shoplifted from. In his fear-toxin-ified state, he panicked and shot Greg in the head. He turned the gun on Max but was intercepted by Batman, who got there just too late to save Greg.
Meanwhile, Marcus is at home sick with some sort of bug and a fever. He’s asleep when the attack happens and is unaware of the fear toxin seeping through his cracked window, filling the room with the toxic green gas. He wakes up in a panic, but there’s no one there to help him as the apartment slowly fills up.
Robin (Jason) escorts Max to a safe area. It’s not until the police bring her back to her home to pack up her belongings that they realize Marcus has been inhaling fear toxin the whole time. They give him the antidote but he has an allergic reaction to something in it. With a combination of Marcus’s illness, prolonged exposure, and intolerance to the antidote, by the time he gets help it’s too late and there’s permanent damage to his brain– he is stuck in a loop of panic and fearful hallucinations. He now requires near constant care.
Max is all alone.
Adoption
Following the Scarecrow attack, Bruce Wayne donates a lot of money to help fix damages made to the city and support victims of the attack, because he’s cool like that. While working to help Gotham recover, Bruce Wayne hears the story of a girl whose father was shot in front of her and her brother that was left permanently disabled during the attack (he definitely hears about this organically and didn’t witness the kids’ father dying because he’s totally not Batman), and the story tugs at his heartstrings. He knows what it’s like to watch a parent die to gun violence. He also definitely has some Batman-style guilt about not being able to stop it from happening.
He does what he does best and adopts the Ledger siblings. Max goes home with Bruce but Marcus isn’t well enough. He’s put in a permanent psychiatric care facility. Max visits him as often as she can.
Max finds out that Bruce is Batman and Jason is Robin at some point in some way, though I haven’t decided how long it takes or how she finds out. If anyone has any ideas I’d be very happy to hear them.
After this information comes to light, Max becomes Robin alongside Jason. It’s a nice outlet for her and it helps her feel like she has some control over things and generally gives her something to focus on other than her trauma. She loves it. Just as she loves being loved by her adoptive family. She finally understands how things are supposed to be, she only wishes Marcus could experience this too.
Bludhaven
(This is where timeline stuff starts to get a little wonky so… just remember I’m always right about everything and if something happens that doesn’t fit the canon timeline, actually it does and you’re just confused.)
Jason dies. (Because I’m not as nice as Iselsis)
It’s bad.
Max is 12 and suddenly she’s alone again. She’s grieving, Jason is gone, Marcus is still in the hospital, and Bruce has completely lost himself. He’s left unable to parent very well, and Max isn’t allowed to go out as Robin anymore. Bruce, however, is out as Batman more than ever.
When Dick gets back from space, he sees this and decides it’s probably best if he takes Max to live with him temporarily in Bludhaven. Bruce agrees because she’d be further from the Joker that way. Max Robin becomes a sidekick for Nightwing and learns to use escrima sticks and extra acrobatics.
The two have their much needed healing and sibling bonding time, but that still leaves Bruce alone and grieving in Gotham. He has Alfred, but Alfred can’t keep an eye on Batman when he’s out fighting.
Enter Timothy Drake.
When Max realizes Bruce got another Robin she is flabbergasted. Being Robin in Gotham was too dangerous for her but he gets someone else to fill the same role? She returns to Gotham and meets Tim.
Instant besties.
Max returns to her role as Gotham’s Robin, this time alongside Tim instead of Jason. Obviously it’s super weird and uncomfortable at first because Tim isn’t Jason and Max misses him, but Max and Tim get along very well.
Renaming
Time grows around the Wayne family’s wounds. Max and Tim are 16 now, both still Robin and both still besties. They’re very good at their jobs. In fact, while Max has been networking with some other young heroes in other cities throughout the country, Tim joined the Teen Titans! An amazing achievement!
Some of you may know where I’m going with this.
Max picks the wrong night to visit the Titans. It’s late, Max and Tim are hanging out in his room when Tim goes to the kitchen to get a snack. While he’s gone the power goes out and there are some loud noises, which clues Max in on the fact that something is wrong.
The events of Titans Tower ensue. Red Hood breaks in and attacks Tim. Max tries to fight Hood, but both she and Tim were caught off-guard and without their costumes. At some point she gets knocked out and when she wakes up, Tim and Hood are gone. She finds them in the Hall of Heroes, and Tim is barely breathing. Red Hood, who took his helmet off at some point, reveals himself to be Jason Todd and repeats his rant about Tim being a replacement and berates Max for accepting him and working with him so easily. And- I’m pretty sure this is my own canon- but he’s angry that Max didn’t know who he was because apparently Bruce already knew.
When the Justice League arrives and Tim is stable and everyone has calmed down a bit, Max corners Bruce and interrogates him about how long he’s known about Jason. She feels hurt and betrayed by Bruce and ashamed that she moved past Jason so easily (she didn’t, but Jason definitely got in her head about it), so she drops the Robin mantle right then and there and she leaves.
Remember those other young heroes she’d been networking with? Her best friend out of all of them, a young woman named Jackie, offered for Max to stay with her and Max agreed, zeta tubing to a coastal city named “Fisherman’s Paradise” or FP for short. Don’t bother looking it up, my dad made it up for his superhero campaign that he runs and I adopted it. Technically I think it’s a real place in Pennsylvania, but this is not the same one.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Max adopts the mantle of Crow. It’s her own name that isn’t connected to anyone else and that doesn’t carry as much weight as Robin does.
She likes it in FP and decides to stay there. She and Jackie make their own superhero team. Originally I named it “Teen Team” but then I realized that I subconsciously stole that from Invincible so now they still don’t have a name. Comment if you have any ideas.
Bludhaven (again)
Max stays in Fisherman’s Paradise for almost a year leading her team and living with Jackie. She has forgiven Bruce, especially since Tim got better and Red Hood has calmed down ever so slightly, but she enjoys her life and her team in FP so she stays. Zeta tubes and geographic closeness make it easy to visit her family in Gotham frequently.
When Damian shows up it’s weird. I can write a whole chapter about that era but I’ll keep it brief and just say it’s weird. And they don’t like each other any more than Tim and Damian like each other. It’s just not as bad because Max doesn’t live in Gotham.
Then Bruce “dies” (cough gets stuck in the timestream cough).
Max is devastated, obviously. Dick has to take up the Batman mantle in Gotham, Tim is isolated because he’s the on;y one convinced Bruce is still alive and he’s going on BruceQuest. With Dick in Gotham, Bludhaven is left without its resident vigilante.
Max, now 17-18, comes to the conclusion that she has to leave her team in FP and go take care of Bludhaven for Dick. She protects the city as Nightwing, since her time as the actual Nightwing’s Robin gave her the necessary knowledge to do so. Also she’s the only one available at the time to do so (idk what Cass is doing at the time but TRUST it can only be Max. For plot reasons.)
While in Bludhaven this time, she pisses off this one particular mob run by a woman in her 20s. This is relevant for later.
Return
Bruce is alive! Sorry for not believing you, Tim.
With Bruce back, Max finally returns to Gotham to be close to the family and to start college at Gotham University and continue vigilanteing under the name of Crow.
Max is 19 and things are better. The whole family is in town, Jason is starting to get along with people again. Damian is a menace but he’s learning to chill out and actually, he and Max realize they have liking art in common so that’s a weird little bit of common ground between them. Duke has joined the family at this point, Max Steph Cass and Tim are besties, and Max’s grades are pretty good.
Then she starts seeing things. Just out of the corner of her eye, on patrol, sometimes at school. She isn’t sure what it is that she’s seeing but it makes her uneasy. Sometimes it’s a man that disappears when she looks at him, other times it’s a spider that wasn’t actually there. It’s a lot of little stuff that builds up until one night on patrol, she sees a man. It looks like her father. Max is tired and confused, so she approaches a little bit to get a better view. It’s definitely her father, but his eyes are black pits and there’s a leaking black hole in his head, right where he was shot 10 years ago.
Max gets knocked out and she wakes up in a room, tied to a chair. A woman in a mask is there and she is so so so angry. She has a ring (not related to the Lanterns) that allows her to create visual and auditory illusions. She uses this to psychologically torture Max while she also beats and berates her. It’s revealed that this woman is the woman that led the mob Max messed with in Bludhaven and… is also Charlotte Ledger!! Max’s long lost sister! :0
Charlotte has had a rough life and unfortunately, their father was right when he said she was just like him. The life she has lived and the choices she has made have made her very cruel and very selfish. She resents everything about her past and Max is the easiest and only available scapegoat. In Charlotte’s eyes, Max killed their mother and their father, then she had the audacity to take down Charlotte’s mob, the thing she’d bled and killed for, her greatest accomplishment in her life? Nuh uh.
How did Charlotte know that Max was Nightwing/Crow? …IDK. I have a million different ideas and possibilities, none of them sit right with me. I’m open to hearing ideas, but for now I’m going to call it their psychic sister bond.
It takes 3 days for Bruce to rescue Max. Charlotte escapes and officially starts her campaign to slowly torture and topple the Bats, but especially her sister.
Friendship is Magic
Max is benched for physical and psychological injuries. She’s allowed to do casework, but nothing that involves her sister because 1) she’s too close to the case and 2) she gets her obsessiveness from Bruce, not his ability to think things through. She’d definitely do something that would get herself or others hurt.
Max is a Bat, so being benched doesn’t stop her. She starts doing subtle investigation as Max, not Crow (Bruce would figure it out immediately). While she’s doing this she stumbles upon three vigilantes that are her age and are also investigating Charlotte– Frankie, Bonnie, and Jacob. Bonnie is a bunny themed hero with super strength that can jump really high, Jacob is also a metahuman but I can’t for the life of me settle on a power for him, and Frankie is a regular human that seems to be the leader. Charlotte’s illusion ring was originally Frankie’s but it was stolen– that’s why the three are looking for Charlotte.
Max knows these vigilantes aren’t supposed to operate in Gotham. Two are metahumans and none of them have Batman’s permission to fight crime, but they have information on Charlotte that Max does not, so Max realizes she can use them for investigation purposes instead of tattling on them to Bruce.
Issues arise because she met them as Maxine Wayne, not Crow, and there are things Crow can do that Max can’t and vice versa. Once Max is unbenched she gets The Crow involved in their secret operation, but things start to get highly complicated, identity-wise.
A ton of stuff happens, things that I’m not super clear on and that I don’t necessarily want to spoil in case I ever want to post something I’ve already written, but the important bits are that Max and Frankie develop feelings for each other, the Vigilantes Three figure out that Max and Crow are the same person, and they eventually somehow defeat Charlotte :) yippeeee
Phew okay I’m done with backstory now. You’re all caught up. TL;DR further down but if you did read that whole thing I love you so so much and THANK YOU.
Where have I seen this Max?
At the time of writing this, the only fic with OG Max in it is Quiet Night by Iselsis.
What about Artemis?
If you’ve read my fic A Nightmare in Tricorner Yard, or if you’ve already read Quiet Night by Iselsis, you may be wondering why I didn’t include Artemis Graves-Green in this. Artemis actually isn’t in OG Max’s universe, she’s a character in mine and Iselsis’s Batman DnD campaign (what the next chapter will be about). Quiet Night is more of a “what if” scenario.
More on Artemis in the next chapter.
TL;DR
Birth - Max’s mother dies in childbirth delivering Max, leaving Max and her siblings (Charlotte and Marcus) in the care of their abusive father. Charlotte runs away when Max is 4.
Scarecrow - Max’s dad dies in a Scarecrow attack and her brother is left with permanent fear toxin brain damage.
Adoption - Bruce Wayne adopts Max and Marcus and Max lives with him and Jason and Alfred but Marcus has to stay at a permanent care facility most of the time. Max becomes Robin alongside Jason.
Bludhaven - Jason dies and Bruce spirals so Dick takes Max to live with him in Bludhaven (she’s his Robin in Bludhaven) until Tim becomes Robin in Gotham and Max moves back and is Robin alongside Tim.
Renaming - Titans Tower happens and Max is there. She has a lot of Big Feelings so she drops the Robin mantle, becomes Crow, and moves to another city to start a teen superhero team.
Bludhaven (again) - Bruce gets lost in the timestream and Max looks after Bludhaven as Nightwing while Dick is Batman in Gotham. She also antagonizes a mob.
Return - Bruce gets back and the family is at its strongest but then later the mob leader from Bludhaven kidnaps and tortures Max. Apparently the mob leader was Max’s long lost sister who ran away all those years ago and she does not like Max.
Friendship is Magic - Max gets new friends and a girlfriend and they all work together to try to take down Charlotte. And there’s secret identity shenanigans.
Thank you for reading about OG Max :D Next chapter to be uploaded soon.