ＢＡＴＭＡＮ ♞ ǝuʎɐʍ ǝɔnɹq (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cowled) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tushanshu_logs2012-12-08 03:07 pm
cowled) wrote in tushanshu_logs2012-12-08 03:07 pm
Entry tags:
[semi-closed]
Characters: Bruce Wayne, semi-closed to Batfam/close CR.
Date: Dec 3rd or so.
Location: Jay's old apartment in Fire, one of the Batwarehouses (pick a place really) and Bruce's suite in Metal.
Situation: Jaybird's gone and Bruce copes. Which is to say that he doesn't cope at all.
Warnings/Rating: Bat levels of angst, some talk/depiction of injury.
The tragedies in Bruce's life have never merited presage. He has never been forewarned; not for gunshots and falling pearls, not for finding the body of his son in the wreckage of an old building. Not for the heart attack that nearly killed Jim Gordon, the loan of Clark's powers that almost drove him to kill Dick. He didn't wake up the morning he watched that little girl drown and expect that the day would drive him to a crippling addiction to Venom. No. As extensively as he plans, as much foresight as he's gifted with, the enemies he can outwit by sheer force of will—
No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength
And he knows it. He damn well breathes that ideology. It's one of the reasons that he always builds his plans in as multi-tiered a fashion as possible. He isn't omniscient. He isn't infallible. But he tries to be.
'Humanity' is a base concept for the Batman. It's difficult to forget, of course, when your closest acquaintances can punch through plate steel, laugh off punishment that would be fatal to a baseline. Humanity isn't blood and flesh and bone, it's not theory, it's— it's what you feel and believe, it's who you love and how. It's in the choices you make and the ones you don't, the causes you represent and fight for.
Sometimes it's the ones you die for.
Jason was a boy who threw himself in front of a woman who'd betrayed him, who'd watched as the Joker took a crowbar to his body. That's humanity at its truest and in its most honest form. Jason's problem was never that he lacked it. It's that he had too much. He was too quick, too compassionate. He let his heart too often rule his head and— and he died for it.
Bruce let him die for it.
Because no matter how many times he hears those words (Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me) he will never accept that he wasn't in every way responsible for it. He's the one that brought Jason into the life. He's the one who took him, trained him, who needed so badly to endanger a child, who thought so blindly that he would be just like Dick—
Not his first mistake, god knows. Not his last.
But one of his worst. One that, even years later, still guides his hand and colours his perceptions.
Which is why when he finds out Jason's gone, the first thing he does is get himself into a fight.
It's easy, in the Fire Sector. Walk into the wrong area at the wrong time and even with the reputation Bruce has built up for himself in the last four months there is always someone willing to stand and fight. These kedan are pushing drugs. Stronger stuff than they would have been going in for before the influx of foreigners. And given the durability and strength of the kedan, Bruce has no reason to hold back.
So he doesn't. He puts them down hard, half-relishing the bruises, the blows he gets out of the deal. When the fight is over and the only noise in the alley is his own harsh breathing, the way his body armour flexes against his torso, the whisper-hiss of his cape as he tugs it around himself, he has to wonder if this is how he'll mourn for Jason each time he loses him.
(And it's happened more than just the once that he buried him, more than just the once in that building in Gotham, more than just on the balcony with Garzonas--)
He dismisses the thought, grapples away onto the nearest roof. Then and only then does he feel steady enough to go to Jason's suite in the sector.
He's been there numerous times. After all, Damian is housed in the same complex. And he's been inside Jason's on occasion, quick and sure and soundless, a visiting shadow or ghost. Now is no different. He cracks open a window he knows from long experience isn't rigged with a trap and he steps down into the apartment (it smells stale, like an unoccupied space left too long alone. He knows that Jason was here as little as possible, but... it still feels like a blow). He makes no noise as he moves through the suite. He touches nothing.
He did this same ritual with Jason's room after his death. And his parents'. To be in someone else's space like it's sacred, to stand still and silent there—
He's grown too goddamned used to it.
He pulls his cape about himself a little more securely and heads upstairs. This floor is as Spartan as the last, though there are maps on the walls, dotted with little pins to mark where Jason has caches of weapons or supplies. Those, Bruce peels gingerly from the wall and folds up, tucking into his belt. He'll clear them out later.
The Red Hood is gone, and the threat that he posed to the people here with him. But gone with him is Bruce's son, and that will never fail to leave a bitter taste in his mouth and a pressure in his chest he can't explain.
He takes the maps. Disables what weapons he finds. And then he leaves, a phantom come and gone.
Date: Dec 3rd or so.
Location: Jay's old apartment in Fire, one of the Batwarehouses (pick a place really) and Bruce's suite in Metal.
Situation: Jaybird's gone and Bruce copes. Which is to say that he doesn't cope at all.
Warnings/Rating: Bat levels of angst, some talk/depiction of injury.
The tragedies in Bruce's life have never merited presage. He has never been forewarned; not for gunshots and falling pearls, not for finding the body of his son in the wreckage of an old building. Not for the heart attack that nearly killed Jim Gordon, the loan of Clark's powers that almost drove him to kill Dick. He didn't wake up the morning he watched that little girl drown and expect that the day would drive him to a crippling addiction to Venom. No. As extensively as he plans, as much foresight as he's gifted with, the enemies he can outwit by sheer force of will—
No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength
And he knows it. He damn well breathes that ideology. It's one of the reasons that he always builds his plans in as multi-tiered a fashion as possible. He isn't omniscient. He isn't infallible. But he tries to be.
'Humanity' is a base concept for the Batman. It's difficult to forget, of course, when your closest acquaintances can punch through plate steel, laugh off punishment that would be fatal to a baseline. Humanity isn't blood and flesh and bone, it's not theory, it's— it's what you feel and believe, it's who you love and how. It's in the choices you make and the ones you don't, the causes you represent and fight for.
Sometimes it's the ones you die for.
Jason was a boy who threw himself in front of a woman who'd betrayed him, who'd watched as the Joker took a crowbar to his body. That's humanity at its truest and in its most honest form. Jason's problem was never that he lacked it. It's that he had too much. He was too quick, too compassionate. He let his heart too often rule his head and— and he died for it.
Bruce let him die for it.
Because no matter how many times he hears those words (Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me) he will never accept that he wasn't in every way responsible for it. He's the one that brought Jason into the life. He's the one who took him, trained him, who needed so badly to endanger a child, who thought so blindly that he would be just like Dick—
Not his first mistake, god knows. Not his last.
But one of his worst. One that, even years later, still guides his hand and colours his perceptions.
Which is why when he finds out Jason's gone, the first thing he does is get himself into a fight.
It's easy, in the Fire Sector. Walk into the wrong area at the wrong time and even with the reputation Bruce has built up for himself in the last four months there is always someone willing to stand and fight. These kedan are pushing drugs. Stronger stuff than they would have been going in for before the influx of foreigners. And given the durability and strength of the kedan, Bruce has no reason to hold back.
So he doesn't. He puts them down hard, half-relishing the bruises, the blows he gets out of the deal. When the fight is over and the only noise in the alley is his own harsh breathing, the way his body armour flexes against his torso, the whisper-hiss of his cape as he tugs it around himself, he has to wonder if this is how he'll mourn for Jason each time he loses him.
(And it's happened more than just the once that he buried him, more than just the once in that building in Gotham, more than just on the balcony with Garzonas--)
He dismisses the thought, grapples away onto the nearest roof. Then and only then does he feel steady enough to go to Jason's suite in the sector.
He's been there numerous times. After all, Damian is housed in the same complex. And he's been inside Jason's on occasion, quick and sure and soundless, a visiting shadow or ghost. Now is no different. He cracks open a window he knows from long experience isn't rigged with a trap and he steps down into the apartment (it smells stale, like an unoccupied space left too long alone. He knows that Jason was here as little as possible, but... it still feels like a blow). He makes no noise as he moves through the suite. He touches nothing.
He did this same ritual with Jason's room after his death. And his parents'. To be in someone else's space like it's sacred, to stand still and silent there—
He's grown too goddamned used to it.
He pulls his cape about himself a little more securely and heads upstairs. This floor is as Spartan as the last, though there are maps on the walls, dotted with little pins to mark where Jason has caches of weapons or supplies. Those, Bruce peels gingerly from the wall and folds up, tucking into his belt. He'll clear them out later.
The Red Hood is gone, and the threat that he posed to the people here with him. But gone with him is Bruce's son, and that will never fail to leave a bitter taste in his mouth and a pressure in his chest he can't explain.
He takes the maps. Disables what weapons he finds. And then he leaves, a phantom come and gone.
no subject
Dick asks it of the Batman that comes into the secured warehouse in Earth, where he's been doing cooldown stretches after his patrol. He saw the fight as a peripheral, wherein he knew from the moment it started that the Batman had it in hand and would scoff assistance, even scorn it. That's because the Batman works alone when his posture is that stiff and his blows that heavy.
The Batman.
It's hard to think of him as Bruce when he's like this. When something integral is gone and, of all the Robins, he's seen it the most. Been around the longest to know how dark he gets, how reclusive he becomes. How impossible it can be to break him out of it short of summoning Alfred to the front lines.
Which is why he doesn't punctuate the question with sarcasm off the bat. Dick just lets him know that he saw the display and knows something is wrong and, by extension, it is then up to Bruce to talk about it lest he deduce it himself.
(Jason. That's where his money is, because he knows he was here. That fact makes it easy to associate Bruce's action with some reaction to the existence of Jason Todd. Again, it's something he's seen before -- Bruce tried to keep it from him, but he saw what he could and heard the rest from Alfred.)
The cowl and cape are hung on the wall, the building on virtual street-level lockdown as he continues to stretch and slow down from the rush of the patrol.
no subject
For once, it's an honest statement rather than an aversion. What little trouble there was tonight he took care of, something made obvious by his stance and posture. He's still combat-ready, despite being fully aware of the fact that this warehouse is empty and secured.
(He trusts Dick that much. In this.)
After a moment, Bruce doffs his cowl. The gloves follow suit. On the surface, his uniform is very much like Dick's, though his is built of a heavier weave, reinforced with the expectation that he'll be taking blows rather than dodging them the way his eldest does. He never wanted this for Dick. He knew the cowl would destroy him. Though, in a way, Bruce is glad he went against his final wishes. Gotham needed Batman.
But she needs Nightwing, too.
Putting on the cowl didn't take Nightwing away from Dick, but it certainly forced him to put aspects of himself in a box. It's evident even now, the way Dick greeted him. No quips. No play. He's aware that something's wrong (they've not been so long apart that Bruce could miss Dick's presence in the shadows, watching him fight) and he's asking about it, plain and calm and without pressure.
He knows Dick. Probably better than anyone alive except maybe Donna. He can anticipate to the letter how he would react to any outside stimuli, knows the exact way he'd counter any attack.
But there's a darkness to Dick that hasn't been present this close to the surface since after Tarantula shot Blockbuster, or later during his days as Renegade, and Bruce's fingers twitch as he hangs his cape and cowl next to Dick's. It's a calm darkness. Resigned rather than reckless. But it's still there, and it still hurts to see. It's just not the only thing hurting at the moment, nor even the most pressing or poignant.
Because Jason is still gone, and all Bruce has of him are the maps tucked into his utility belt.
He could leave. He hadn't expected this warehouse to be occupied (there were signs, if he'd been looking for them, but he hadn't been. Foolish. He's letting his heart rule his head and that's never been a good thing as far as he's concerned) and it would be easy to claim business elsewhere. Dick has no part in this private grief.
(That's the way it always is, between fathers and--)
His hand spasms in the shadow-spill of his cape and he has to step back and away from the wall before he drives his fist against it.
(fathers and sons)
The last real talk he had with Jason was that night on the rooftop after Stephanie's party. He hadn't felt very much like a father then, and now it's a knife twisted up just under his ribs. Hard, hurting. And he's sick of it. So damn sick he can't (doesn't want to) look Dick in the face.
But he does. One eyebrow quirked just so. It's still hard after all these years to look at Dick and see the man he's become instead of the bright flitting bird he used to be. Sometimes when he closes his eyes he can still see that primary-coloured flash in his mind.
When he sees it now, all he can think about is Jason. Hearing his voice in the Emperor's Echo Room.
It's not as easy as he'd like it to be, the way he forces those thoughts aside. Brings himself back to this moment - exactly this. Right here, he and Dick in a warehouse that is so unlike the Cave.
Any port in a storm. And make no mistake, this is a storm.
no subject
"What were they running?"
Dick angles the conversation, making it clear that he knows what that negative means. What he wants to know are the details he missed, the primary of that being the crime. The punishment needs to fit and he's not sure Bruce is in the right state of mind to differentiate between drug running and jaywalking.
Jay. It's a sensitive point, even caught as a vague reference in his thoughts. There's so much history tied into it, so many rifts between them caused by that name. That boy, nearly turned a man before the Joker got him, and then risen from the dead as an adult -- or the nearest he could be, despite having that immature view of what needed to be done to deal with crime.
Dick's careful with his expression as he pulls an arm across his chest, stretching his shoulders with care. Bruce will, no doubt, pick up on a half dozen tick regardless, but he won't hand it this doubt to him on a silver platter.