tushanshu_logs | ( closed )

He feels sick. It’s nothing physical - pain is a near constant when you are attacking things fifty times your size with only a ring. As easy as it looked, it still took a toll. He was flesh and bone, his willpower was the real battery. That’s the tool that’ll serve him best in the recovery period, the sheer capacity to overcome.

This isn’t the first time he’s been tortured and it won’t be the last. He knows what to do. He takes a hot shower, keeps to himself (fends Zatanna off, somehow, it helps that she’s mostly out). The first night, he spends on the roof, outside, breathing in the (fresh?) air, dangling his legs over the edge, trying to understand freedom.

The second night, he climbs to the highest point he can, and stays there. Or he wants to, at least, but his hands are still injured, and the healing process will be delicate. He can’t paint, he can barely cook, all he can do is stare at what he considers the most important part of his body completely destroyed (and he feels so sick). It’s so different from his vision being taken, and he hates himself for dwelling on it so much when it’s just a matter of waiting for it to heal.

All the same, he doesn’t miss Bruce’s training. In fact, Kyle takes his little escapade with the cult as even more reason to train harder. It hadn’t been his fault that Jim’d jumped in, and Spock had followed, but he still took responsibility for it. If it’d been only him taken... he’d have managed.

Enough of that. Failures happened, when the sky broke, a Lantern picked up the pieces and moved the hell on. If there was going to be an army of the undead in his future--

He can’t use a bow and arrow, obviously, luckily it’s not Monday when he shows up at the warehouse. He’s learnt to be quiet, but really, very few people can sneak up on the goddamn Batman so he isn’t surprised at being addressed first.

‘Hey.’

His voice lacks its requisite cheer, and he is already dressed in workout clothes. There is no ring anywhere on his person, he’s just Kyle.

But just Kyle is also who he says he is, when he’s out there, just an artist, not a physicist, or a diplomat, or a geneticist--, and just Kyle is every bit the force of nature, ring or no ring.

His hands are clumsily wrapped in bandages, and he looks determinedly at Bruce as he steps onto the mat, ready to begin. Broken hands aren’t an excuse.

Bruce lowers himself into a plank, and from there to the ground in one smooth motion, still using only one hand. It takes a phenomenal amount of strength and control to make it look so effortless, but he's not showing off, he's testing himself. Pushing.

Once he's there, he chalks his hands once more and turns to look at Kyle as he comes onto the mat.

He's injured. The hands are obvious, but Bruce sees other signs of it. His breathing is four or five litres per minute shallower than usual. Broken ribs. The way he's holding his shoulders suggest a recent dislocation on the left side. His weight isn't evenly distributed between his feet, a light injury to either the ankle or knee. But the hands are the worst, and Bruce studies those clumsy bandages without comment.

Going after an artist's hands is something he would do, in his more vicious moments. After all, he blinded this boy once upon a time.

"When your hands are out of commission in a fight, use your elbows. It shortens your reach, but increases the strength and force of your blows. You have to accept the risks involved in getting in closer to your opponent, but the trade-off is that you can usually put an end to a fight quicker. If you can concentrate." He slips into a Muay Thai form without conscious thought, his movements flowing and natural. "Approach."

He is nowhere near that flexible, and he likely will never be, but he admires the movement anyway. There's poetry to it - or art, rather - and he can appreciate that, if nothing else. He stands his own ground. We are in the same league.

The scrutiny of his own body doesn't escape him. Bruce never makes it clear that he's watching, but he's a detective; Kyle hardly expects things like injuries to escape his notice, and so he doesn't flinch at all.

'I can use my teeth too, actually,' he comments, wryly, as he takes up a (slightly clumsier) stance. Concentration was one of the things he had the least problem with.

Edited (w o r d s) 2013-07-10 17:19 (UTC)

"In a real fight, I'd be disappointed if you didn't." It's a dry comment. Not a joke, but there is a tiny, tiny speck of humour behind it. When it's life or death, you do what you need to to win. To make sure everyone walks away.

Kyle's learned that the hard way, but it never hearts to reiterate.

He's learnt this the hard way: how to be an utter pragmatist in combat. The first part of the body he always attacks are the eyes. If they can't see you... well. It's hard to fight back, like that. He knows firsthand what it feels like.

'Really! Didn't think anyone would let me get that frisky.' He grins, widely, happy that this part of him is still here, and still going. 'Okay, how exactly should I be using my elbows? Or should I just move first and find out?' He was a kinaesthetic learner, he knew by doing, but it never hurt to watch first and maybe - put less strain on his body.

Bruce ignores the playfulness. It hurts, hearing it. It's so much like Dick, and Bruce systematically shuts it out. Instead, he demonstrates, stepping in close to Kyle and lifting his elbow in a precise strike. He levels it against Kyle's sternum without touching. "With enough force behind it, this could crush the ribcage. Elbows also have a far higher likelihood of causing facial lacerations. If you hit someone in the temple, the jaw, he back of the head at the base of the skull. Any of those will render someone unconscious. Don't angle up under the chin, it has a seventy-three percent chance of being a fatal strike."

Edited 2013-07-11 01:32 (UTC)

It startles him that he doesn't flinch from the touch. Bruce is always somebody he's associated with violence, and right now when he's still on extra alert, Kyle's extremely surprised.

He follows the movement, watching it intensely. Making it stick will be something else because he frowns, tilts his head. 'I have to be taught to fight to disable,' he says, slowly. Like Damian, he doesn't add. 'Without my ring--' I'd do anything. '-- no restraint.' That worries him, having no limits.

He doesn't like that, and it's obvious in the tension to his expression, but teaching Damian has... taught him patience. He's always been quick to condemn those that couldn't conform to his ideals, but how many times has he been proven wrong, now?

He thinks of Stephanie, and something to that tension eases off, just slightly.

"You have the restraint, you just need to learn how to repurpose it. You're an artist. Find an unconventional solution." The words - faint encouragement - are all but pulled out of him. It's a battle, to not simply tell him leave.

He knew Bruce wouldn't, but Kyle doesn't tense back defensively. He remains thoughtful.

'I'm going to avoid using my elbows to hit somebody's head,' he decides, eventually. 'Until I can figure out how much force is appropriate.' It's a fair compromise, he's not biting off more than he can chew, and he's not living in fear of hurting someone worse than they deserved.

Maybe it's not as unconventional solution as he or Bruce would like, but it's baby steps, and it's a start. After all, he does have the appropriate tools to defend himself properly when attacked (he'd done just fine against those kedan in the cult, actually, and felt a bit proud of himself), the rest of this was... specialisation.

Bruce looks at him intently for a moment, and then there's a barely perceptible nod, acknowledgement of the acceptability of Kyle's compromise. But in his mind, he's thinking of Dick, who beat the Joker to death.

(He still remembers the sights and sounds and smells of that old Church, can still hear the dull cacophony of voices around him as he did chest compressions so that someone he hated could live, and not bloody the hands of his oldest boy)

They lapse into silence for a time, the ebb and flow of the fight. Bruce teaches, and Kyle learns. It's different than it is with Damian, with the younger Dick. Than it was with Stephanie or Cassandra or Tim. Kyle's learned to compensate for the lack of his ring, but it's still a part of him in the shadow of every movement. He's fought things that could split planets with a thought, and known his share of victories and defeats, but he isn't Gotham. There are things that Bruce has learned on the streets there, impossible to translate, that he passes or imprints upon each of his Bats. That element is absent from the way Kyle fights, and Bruce... has no honest desire to press it on him. Gotham is all the worst the world has to offer, but it's only one world, and knowing its dark secrets doesn't help you in the rest of the universe.

Bruce has fought things that can split planets with a thought also.

(Gotcha)

When their time is up, Bruce ceases his motions, and then nods at a nearby workbench. The implication being that Kyle should move to it.

Perceptible to him, even though he didn't really need to see it. He hasn't needed or wanted Bruce's approval for a very long time now, but he's still pensive as he fights, because he stays quiet. He's slower, too, but that changes once he gets into the swing of things. In his mind he's adjusted well, without the ring. He has to work with what he has, take what he can get. There is darkness and silence in the universe, too, he has to remain above it or he'll sink like a stone, to the bottom of the ocean.

He exhales, a little relieved that the training is over for the day (and that Bruce didn't hold back that much with him) and then his eye catches the workbench, where bandages have been laid out.

He looks at Bruce questioningly, his expression darkening. Surely that gesture didn't mean what Kyle thinks it means.

"Sit." Bruce gestures to a stool sitting in front of the bench, and he steps up beside it. For whatever reason, Kyle neglected to go to Soranik with his injuries, the hands he obviously bandaged himself. Bruce may be a harsh man at times, but he's never cruel. And he knows broken bones.

It takes him a while, but he obeys. He's gone blank as a defensive mechanism, because this is new territory and he has no idea how to navigate it. Kyle usually looks before he leaps. He might land in a pit of vipers, and that won't do.

Bruce doesn't reach for Kyle, but he does hold out a hand. Giving the option, rather than issuing an edict. Bruce knows that his orders are hard to disobey, and Kyle - as similar as he is - isn't Dick. They don't have the history, the trust. Dick would put himself in Bruce's hands a thousand times over, with all the faith that's ever set the world aflame.

He stares at it, for a long time, completely immobile. Then he stretches out his left hand, his dominant one.

And Bruce redoes those bandages in complete silence. His motions are practiced, quick, efficient. It's not painless - there's no way to avoid a little discomfort - but he's always had careful hands for such a big man.

"When metahuman abilities are back on line, ask Zatanna to heal you."

There's an urge - as there always is - to sarcastically say Yes, sir, but he doesn't. They're beyond that. A lot of his perceptions about Bruce are changing, and Kyle isn't sure that's entirely a good thing.

'Just the hands,' he says, by way of agreeing.

Bruce hnns a little, faintly. It's a faint sound of agreement. Then, "Look after those ribs." It's as close as he'll get to expressing concern over the rest of Kyle's injuries.

He nods, accepting it, though not easily. They're both too stubborn for anything less.

Bruce turns away from him, and it's as clear a dismissal as a verbal announcement. "I'll see you tomorrow."

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