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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
But he had been there when Bruce lost Jason the first time. Had seen Bruce break his knuckles when he punched Kal in anger. He had also been there when Jason came back, and Bruce questioned all of those who'd died and came back to get an answer out of it. Clark included.
And he's going to be there now that he's lost Jason again. Just not in the overbearing, patronizing way he was the first time. This time he will try his darnest to do it right. So he doesn't reach out for Bruce, doesn't talk about it even when they do meet. He makes it clear he's there in all the ways he can imagine, but he doesn't push it. He simply is the friend Bruce always has had, even when he didn't want him.
A couple of days later from Bruce's visit to Jason's house, he knocks on Bruce's door as Clark Kent. There's been some changes in the newspaper project, and any excuse is honestly valid to pay his friend a visit.
no subject
And the way Clark knocks is so home-grown, Kansas farmboy that Bruce couldn't mistake him for anyone else. Bruce considers ignoring him.
Because although this must be part of Clark's personal campaign to give him space in the wake of tragedy, and despite the fact that Bruce can deduce - by the way Clark knocked, by the fact that he's coming here as Clark Kent - that Clark is going to try to discuss something else entirely, there's a part of him that simply doesn't want to talk to him.
Clark has always had a better read on his weaknesses than most people, and Bruce isn't in the mood to have those weaknesses drawn out and dissected. Oh, Clark would never be so crass. But when he's the Man of Steel or the simple Kansas farmboy, he wears his heart on his sleeve. Each tragedy that Bruce has ever endured Clark wears like a scar of his own.
The reverse is also true. But Bruce hides it better.
If he turns Clark away, one of three things will happen. Clark will come back as Superman and force his hand. Clark will go get Lois. Or Bruce will feel like a heel.
Possibly some combination of all three.
So he goes to the door. He doesn't look much like Bruce Wayne today. He's in simple sparring clothes, and has a towel slung over one shoulder. By the sheen of sweat on his skin and the fact that his breathing is... more laboured than normal for even extensive exertion, not to mention his current heartrate of approximately 120 bpm, the fact that he's been exercising is obvious.
And because it's Clark, Bruce allows for him noticing the bruises across his knuckles (punching bag) and the tiny stress fractures across the metacarpals. God knows he's told Clark to lay off the X-Ray vision around him, but he can count the amount of times he's actually listened on one hand.
So he opens the door and lets Clark in without a word. He doesn't speak until it clicks closed behind them both.
"What?"
no subject
Being dragged inside is neither surprising nolt intimidating at this point, but Clark was so sure Bruce wouldn't open the door for him he takes a milisecond to react. He tries not to be surprised by Bruce, not after all these years (that feel like eons) of friendship, but he still doesn't understand his thought process most of the time. Bruce is better at predicting people's actions, Clark can read their emotions better.
"Hello." Smooth. "I should have probably called, it's not official business. Not night-official-business, anyway. It's about the newspaper, the one you offered to fund."
And he pauses, letting Bruce say he doesn't want to talk about that right now if he feels the need to. He feels silly treating Bruce like he was made of porcelain but it's never enough precautions when Jason is involved..
no subject
no subject
"Of course you did Bruce, there wasn't any doubt." He's not the only one who can use sarcasm when it suits him though. "The problem is basically the language barrier. I'd rather use the newspaper- it's what I know, what I'm good at. But we'd have to use some kind of podcasts to read them out loud anyway.
So maybe... a radio program would be more useful? Would Wayne Enterprises still be interested in funding that?"
no subject
"Anything else?"