closed

[pearlstrings]

characters: Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Riku, Vanitas
location: The museum + the church
date/time: Post Sandman event- from the point that the dreamers wake +4days
content: Jason tips his hand and some complicated truths are revealed + Bruce goes to the church to wait for familiar faces to be resurrected
warnings: violence, gore, character death



museum | jason todd
[He's dreaming until he isn't. It's a difficult thing to describe as dreaming in the first place when Bruce doesn't remember falling asleep. They're before and after images- he had been there, at the dinner. And then he'd been looking up at the church, squinting through barely remembered sunlight.

His body feels stiff and that's perhaps the first sensation to occur to him. The muscle in his stomach and arms is tight from disuse, his back feels like one solid shape that's been locked together. Everything is dark and cold. Bruce tries to flex his toes but he isn't sure if it follows through- if it's an idea of if it actually carries. He tries his fingers. And slowly he becomes aware of his face- the muscle around his mouth and the space between his brows. There's no corona behind his closed eyes and Bruce is sure he must be back where he started, but he isn't vertical anymore. Everything around him feels strange and muted- as if his hands are over his ears.

A small noise comes out of him, not quiet a grunt, but more than a breath. And slowly Bruce is able to open his eyes for the first time in two weeks.]





church | riku + vanitas
[Jason leaves. This is not unexpected because in the time they've known each other, if it could be called that, Jason leaving has become a sort of constant. Their paths intersect from time to time, and then they are forcibly diverted. Bruce doesn't blame him; he suspects that Jason would have fled while he was still smouldering if he could. It was necessity that had kept them together, reversed their positions.

But alone in the museum once more Bruce hears his tablet respond, an incoming message. It's reassuring to see that Riku is present and accounted for, that he's already trying to get on top of things, to organize. Bruce understands this reaction because it's one that they share.

And that changes as soon as the tablet chimes again. The bulletin.

If he is honest (and Bruce tries to be honest) he isn't take aback to find Vanitas's name on the obituaries. He has been listed before, but there is a chaotic recklessness in him that Bruce has long since been aware of. A kind of fearlessness in regards to his own limits, to whatever pain his actions might incur. There is a moment where he considers how this might change his demeanor and what Bruce might be able to learn about his motivation. But that moment is subsumed by Jim Gordon's name on the list. It strikes Bruce like a glancing shot- that makes his ears ring and makes his body feel hot with urgency and nausea.

The James Gordon he knows has always been part of the GCPD and by extension his life has always been close to danger. Sometimes that danger is more present than others, sometimes it's more personal. He has been targeted more than once and Bruce has lost sleep for worry before. He has has practice clamping the lid down on what might have happened, on his worst fears. He tries to remind himself of this now, as he climbs to his feet and tears out the door without bothering for a jacket or even his shoes. The dead do not stay dead here. He knows this to be fact, he has seen it, Vanitas himself is a testament.

But the fear persists.

Bruce races to the church like a man possessed, along dirt trails and through trees, until the building looms ahead of him- a strange twin to the place he'd just woken from.]

Comments

museum

[mind_blown]

[ he is so tired. at first, he had help from Vanitas. Help he swore he didn't need, but appreciated all the same. Because being alone, while something he's used to, has an extra frenetic quality in the absence of light. In the danger of a constant threat. Whatever sleep schedule he'd managed to build had long since been tossed out, even with the ability to swap in shifts. And yet-- he noticed the other's absence immediately.

And then he settled. He adapted. Because what else could he do? He couldn't abandon Bruce. Even his back and forths, drawing the monsters one direction or another, completely halted. A plan that almost worked, until the last-- god? Hours? Days? He hadn't bothered to check. Just tried to fight a monster with an unexpected skillset.

Guns were too loud, and swords burned. But he'd rather take the burns than draw more spirits to this place. It ended-- painfully. His arms and hands burned, a stray strike at his neck burned down to his chest, laced into a larger burn across the length of his side and towards his back. Even resting on the ground the way he was, back against the wall, holding a gun in a hand that really shouldn't be holding anything...

it was painful.

He hears him before he sees him, and utters a soft curse under his breath. Finally.

He could leave, before he fully woke up. But Jason, despite himself, is tired. And in pain. And trying to not wonder if this is what he would have felt, if the crowbar hadn't knocked him out, if his next memory hadn't been waking up screaming in a lazarus pool?]

[pearlstrings]

[Until the death of his parents Bruce's bad dreams had been no different from any other child. Very young he'd had the pleasure of bedtime stories, tales of parties and dances, of far away places he couldn't yet imagine. When the odd nightmare would wake him Bruce would pad down the hall and usually find Alfred. Sometimes they would have a cup of tea together and he'd be walked back to his room, coaxed under the blankets again with the promise of a nightlight and a man that would stay until he fell asleep. Sometimes it would be his mother or father, who would sit beside his legs or lay beside him and smooth his hair- ask about the dream and about the monsters inside them. What do you think the monsters might be afraid of, Bruce? Surely they have nightmares too.

And then they changed.
At eleven and twelve Bruce would scream in his sleep, would bring Alfred down the hall still in his uniform sometimes, in his housecoat in others. At thirteen he'd learned this small trick, to try and wake himself with his own voice. That if he couldn't control the dream then he could control his body outside of it, make a low cry in the back of his throat that would bring him back to himself.

It's what he does now and it's the reason that Bruce's next inhale is a sharp, deep breath. His body sits upright, defiant of its atrophy and his nostrils are filled with the nauseating stench of cooked flesh. A sensory memory that will never wash out. And now a vision he will forever pair with it.

Jason Todd is on the floor with his back against the wall. There is a gun in his hand and his body is-

Bruce's fingers claw at the ground as he pushes, pulls, frantic for purchase. He looks not unlike a new foal, unsteady on his legs with knees that buckle when he tries to press his weight into them. It's a uniquely graceless moment as Bruce allows himself to be guided by impulse and urgency instead of the rhythms and limitations of his own body, instead of the necessity of caution. He trips on the way over, stumbling briefly without falling entirely- before Bruce ends up on his knee, sliding the rest of the way over. The horror is naked on his face and Bruce reaches for him, pressing two fingers to the pulse point in his throat as his other hand hovers- an uncharacteristic moment of visible uncertainty. The desire to connect and the terror that comes in not wanting to do more harm.]

[mind_blown]

[ the movement-- or the set of movements- is not what he expects. Maybe once upon a time, he knows that Bruce is caring like this. But their relationship had been too icy, for too long. But he's snapped out of that when he feels warm fingers against his neck, and shrugs away just slightly. ]

Still alive.

[ his voice is... not raspy, but soft. speaking louder is effort, precious effort that he doesn't want to waste, just like the movements he both wants to make and can't will himself to make. the burns are painful, and there's a part of him that kind of wants to ask for Bruce to just land a solid punch. knock him out until the lazarus pool can do its thing, and he can move around slightly easier.

just slightly. there's still the fact that he feels more relaxed than he has in ages, and he slowly moves his hand, lowering the gun to the floor, finally letting go, which is almost as painful as holding on was. but his head thunks back against the wall. ]

Welcome back, sleeping beauty.

[ he owed him. ]

[pearlstrings]

[Jason looks at him with his eyes, not the whole of his head and the absence of movement speaks volumes to the amount of pain he must be in. That he endures it because the need to shake Bruce's fingers off of his throat is more important, more powerful.

He doesn't take it personally because there's no time to. Because it doesn't matter.
The gun clatters as it lands on the floor and Bruce picks it up, checks the safety in small, short movements, then tucks it into the waistband of his slacks. It is- a significantly personal tell because it says things about him that Bruce has tried for many years not to vocalize at all. It speaks to the length of time he spent learning how to hold his very first handgun, how to use it, and how to be prepared for what it meant to aim and squeeze.

Jason's head thunks quietly against the wall. Bruce can't smell anything else and this close, it's impossible to ignore the heat wafting off of his body, even now. How long has it been? How long has he been like this?]

What do you need?

[The question is too small, it's too small by half and already Bruce is trying to estimate how quickly he can get to the second staircase- to pull up the base boards and get to his stash of medical supplies- to see what he can find, what he can use. It means leaving Jason alone and that is where the decision hinges. His chest is a vice, the breaths that come out of him too tight, too shallow.]

What can I do?

[mind_blown]

[ it's almost touching, in a way, to consider that bruce is concerned about him. but he knows that when he wants to, when both of them want to, they're capable of putting all the bullshit aside to work together. the problem is that it always, always comes with strings attached. the closest he's felt to this, is when Bruce came to tell him about Roy's passing. And even that had had a moment of bittersweet reminder of how they still weren't on great terms.

so there's an instinct there, to say nothing, not least borne out of the knowledge that, all this pain aside? he'll probably heal quickly. he always healed quickly.

a blessing and a curse. ]

Bandages.

[ he glances at his hands-- there's very little helping them. there was just no way he was going to walk around with oven mitts on. but he could at least bandage his arms, the parts that were burned. ]

Fuck-- water, too.

[pearlstrings]

[The bandages won't help. They'll protect against infection, but supplies in Beacon are so limited that there isn't enough for the inevitability of changing them, using fresh material as his skin heals. Jason's eyes go to his hands, a part of him that's more shape than recognizable substance- and Bruce pauses just long enough to watch his face, to see his lucidity. Perhaps it's an unfair moment to take, after all, it's clear that Jason has been here for some time, forcing himself to remain present and aware. To stay on alert.

To protect Bruce.]

I'm coming back.

[It sounds too much like a promise, but then the brutal force of his honesty has never been convenient. There are times it lands like a battering ram. Maybe Jason doesn't need to hear it, but Bruce needs to say it.

A battering ram that swings both ways.

Bruce stands abruptly and tears off down the hall; his normally quiet gait made trackable by dulled nerve endings and clumsy joints. He slides once and catches himself against a wall. It doesn't slow him down. He stumbles a second time when he reaches the stair and begins prying it up from the far edge, jaw clenched and brows drawn together until it yields. When Bruce comes back it's with a bag slung over one shoulder (one of his first aid kits) and a strap slung over the other (a canteen.) They come off of him in a single, lopsided jerk as he sinks to one knee again.

The priority is to open his kit, one of four that he'd been carefully collecting supplies for since he'd arrived, one of four that he'd hidden through the town. The rise and fall of his chest is quick with urgency, but not wild enough to suggest panic or exhaustion. The canteen's lid comes away and he lifts it.]

Drink.

[He knows that the request for water had been largely for his hands, to drop his body temperature, to clean the wounds out. But Bruce raises the lip of the canteen to Jason's mouth instead and waits. Waits until Jason has begun to drink. Waits until he has drunk.

And then he uses the last of his ketamine, a small pinprick in Jason's thigh.]

[mind_blown]

[ was bruce counting on him being too tired to protest? probably. he was a good gamble. he didn't want the drink-- though he knew there was a decent chance that he was dehydrated. but in terms of priorities, this wasn't the top concern for him. he may be in a lot of pain, but there's no hiding the suspicion in his eyes. the unsaid question of "what are you doing?" because for the life of him, he could not convince himself this was naïveté on Bruce's part.

Bruce was a lot of things, but naive was not one of them. everything was with a purpose, a feeling Jason related with far too much. but he drinks, and starts to say something, and then he feels the pinprick, feels the immediate sluggishness spreading from there. ]

I knew you were up to something.

[ he starts to stand, but his body already felt heavy, but now he felt rooted to the spot. and he immediately falls back. he'd been doing the mental calculations in his head: how far can he get like this? how quickly can he escape? is he going to pass out? and he finds those calculations impossible to finish, as he found it impossible to even stand up, his mind slowing. and the environment around him blurring. He should still stand up, but he doesn't think he could, and he tilts his head back against the wall again.

at least, he feels the pain numbing just as well as he feels darkness enclosing on the edge of his vision. he's exhausted. it takes only a few minutes for darkness to take him. to sink in to nothingness.

at least... it was Bruce this time, and not the Joker. Bruce has done some shitty things to him, but at least it was him. At least this was the sort of weakness he could tolerate, even only nominally. ignoring how his hands-- even where it should have been impossible for skin to regrow- were already quickly stitching themselves back together at a rate no human should be able to do. ]

church

[equinoctials]

[ Riku had more ground to cover and a few stops to make, but unlike Bruce, he wasn't going on foot. He's not a cook, a fact Quentin and Prompto swiftly learned meant stretching rations included a lot of thin, bland soup if Riku was left in charge of their meals. So when he pulls up to the general store, he heaps canned goods - vegetables, fish, beans, whatever other proteins he can find and, by force of habit, even a couple of cans of peaches - into a canvas bag.

He fills up jugs of water. Finds a bottle of antibiotics hiding under and behind a rack, right up against the wall. It's dusty and out of date. Riku takes it anyway, along with whatever passes for disinfectant. That last part might mean risking the Invincible and its almost assuredly raided bar.

Riku checks there anyway. Talks to people briefly, and makes his way back to the armory to drop things off.

He doesn't stay to chat. Just leaves them inside the door and goes, trusts they'll understand that while Riku will keep his word, he has priorities that don't shift much. Prompto and Quentin are alive, wounded like... everyone is, he leaves them the antigrav cart and the other bike.

The trip is really a lot faster with transportation, even if the lack of a headlight requires care.

He's worried about others, too. Bruce hasn't told him where he is, and when Riku returns to the square he has a few options -- he could try the museum, but the church is right here, and Vanitas...

Moments later, he decides, pushing through the church's large doors, his lantern high. He's haggard, his hair dull and disheveled and the clothes he's wearing ill-fitting but warmer than the usual. A scarf, recently taken from the general store, keeps the cold off his healing throat and the gauze wrapped around it. He, like just about everyone else, could probably do with a hot meal and a shower, but first things first.

He's alive. He has the luxury of time to deal with those things. Vanitas doesn't. Bruce... deserves to know, and a sinking pit in his stomach whispers that he probably read the bulletin because he's always reading. He has an appetite for knowledge that's limitless.

That's something he shares with Vanitas, a hunger that manifests itself in different ways. They burn. Vanitas might want something none of them can give him, and yet he keeps coming back. There's something ugly and selfish that would wish this place on someone, but Riku thinks- he thinks he wants him back.

He's sure he does. ]

[pearlstrings]

[It is perhaps the most disheveled that Bruce has ever allowed himself to appear while in Beacon. Later, when the urgency and terror are no longer swallowing him whole, deafening him to the world, Bruce will reflect on this moment that he allowed himself to succumb to impulse and he will say that he is only human. It was a human reaction. It was also an opportunity to do better, be better. To suffocate the impulse for a higher calling.

There was a time that he sat beside Selina and said I wonder if my parents dying made me a little insane. It doesn't feel untrue. Even, perhaps most especially now.

Bruce comes through the woods and feels a perverse sense of deja vu to find himself at the church again. This building has never meant much to him in the way that faith and religion have never meant much. They are subjects he can understand from an objective perspective- the attraction and appeal aren't unfathomable things. But they hold no comforts or ghosts for him. How much of that has changed now? It doesn't bear dwelling on.

There's a bike a short distance away, an unmistakable sign that he is not alone. In other circumstances this would be enough to redirect him. To convince him to alter his course. It does not.

Bruce comes to the church door instead and pushes it open. This t-shirt has short-sleeves and the material is thin, it's meant for training, pushing himself through his exercises. His hair is mussed and there are a few piece of brush in it, twigs and leaves. Mud clings to his feet and ankles, the skin pinched pink in the places that cold hadn't made him stark white. He doesn't feel it. There is no wet slap of skin on the floor as Bruce enters, slips inside, but then he has always been quiet. The rise and fall of his chest comes quick, betrays the race he'd made to get here- but worse is the thready sound of his voice.

He is not afraid for Vanitas, who has routinely defied odds, who is not quite human and perhaps never was. His fear is for-]

Jim-?

[equinoctials]

[ It's human, that's true. Bruce's will is, indeed, strong enough to resist many of the heart's impulses, he has the bearing of one older than his years, but there are times when the heart is too loud, when it can crowd out thoughts and doubts and fears and hopes. It's a sword that cuts both ways, can arm one to take on insurmountable odds for the sake of something important, can cripple one under the weight of its own pain.

Bruce seems well acquainted with both aspects.

The booted tread that thumps the wooden floorboards, the glow of the lantern on the approach is not Gordon's. Nor does his silhouette blot out the light like Vanitas does. Riku says nothing and the light of his lantern sways over the greasy black of his coat, the dull cascade of his hair and the hollows fatigue have carved into his face.

Riku can say he's seen a lot of Bruce.

He can't say he's ever seen him afraid. No- afraid for someone, that's what this is. Jim. Hadn't there been a name starting with J on the list of the fallen? He can't be sure without looking, and what he's looking at right now is Bruce.

Riku shakes his head and leans over, sitting his lantern down on a pew, then wordlessly shrugging out of his bomber jacket. Beneath it, he has a gray hoodie he's pulled on over his other clothes, extra layers against the cold. He has enough to spare. Riku doesn't hold this out to wait for Bruce to decide if he'll take it. He shakes it out, advances with it, like he means to put this around his shoulders. ]

...

[ He's not here. ]

[pearlstrings]

[His immediate reaction is denial.

This is not to say that he doesn't know how to trust, or that he distrusts Riku in particular. But there are things that Bruce is unwilling to believe until he can see and touch and test them for himself. It had never been enough to just hope that Jim would survive before. Bruce had always made his way to the city, had always needed to see him with his own eyes. It's no different now.

His gaze lands on Riku and the momentary non sequitur answers itself a beat later: he is here for Vanitas. An interesting development in its own right. Bruce isn't yet able to appreciate it. His eyes move frantically over the scene itself- the four walls, the altar, the candles. It requires him to overlook the generous shift of Riku's weight and the jacket that slides from his shoulders. Instead of staying still for the advance, for the offering, there is something naked and primal on Bruce's face as he pushes out of the way, moves himself from the trajectory of Riku's kindness and further into the church.

It's too close to touch, to even think about.

The shape of his mouth is feral, his pulse thunders in his ears.
It happened when his parents died too. It was Jim Gordon who wrapped a coat around his shoulders, who promised that his world wasn't ending when they both knew that it was. His breaths are coming too fast.]

How long have you been here? [A demand, perhaps an accusation.]

You can't have checked everywhere. You don't know.

[equinoctials]

[ Grief can be ugly. Riku knows it well and he's not about to hold Bruce accountable for how it manifests. He bore the brunt of Riku's own, he wore the bruises and wears the scars of that awful night.

He doesn't know, he can't know that his well-intended offer of his jacket has a certain association that lies so close to memories of grief and loss that are still a wound on his heart. It could be that Bruce just hurts or worries too much to accept, that he can't get through the cloud of distress. Riku doesn't take it personally, but he's pragmatic enough to know that Bruce has been running, that his sweat must be cooling him quickly, and his feet are probably freezing under all that mud.

He wonders if Bruce is even in a state to notice, or if he'll be shaking hard enough to make his back ache before he realizes his temperature has dropped dangerously low. Tracking his expression, the direction his gaze goes in, how they break in different but not unassociated ways. ]

...

[ Riku shakes his head, his answer again a refusal, or maybe a denial. He hasn't checked everywhere, he can't know, he hasn't been here long, but he's been alive long enough to know he might hyperventilate, that he might be looking at the start of a self destructive spiral if he doesn't do something.

Bruce might hate him for it, might mistake this for unwanted or unwarranted pity.

The jacket is traded into his other hand and it's the right that reaches out for his shoulder, that jerks him, to command his attention. Even if he had any answers for him, Riku can't say them; he steps in to close the distance and, unless Bruce wrests himself away, he means to put that jacket on the hanger of his shoulders.

It hurts, but not as badly as if he managed actual speech. This word he can hiss without making many demands on his injured throat and mangled voice: ] Sit.

[pearlstrings]

[Bruce is not in a state to notice. He's been numb to his own body and it's needs since the moment the bulletin was published. Color had long since leeched from his skin and what isn't stubbornly pink with cold is now a ghostly white. His arms. His hands. His feet. Like a racehorse the rise and fall of his chest remains a frenetic rhythm, a response outside of his awareness and by extension his control. Bruce doesn't care. He needs Jim Gordon more than he needs to be warm, to have shoes, to have a home.

But instead of turning his fear outward as Riku had been prompted too, Bruce resembles a collapsing building instead- ceilings and columns buckling, crashing in on one another. A man who refuses to leave the one thing that makes him feel safe. That is his own.

He doesn't register the second movement Riku makes, the hand that reaches for his shoulder so much as his honed reflexes make up for it. His own arm raises, an instinctive block, redirection, that's stopped short by the sound of Riku's voice. By the sound that was once Riku's voice and now is something- wrong.] You're- [Bruce's face swings around, no less hunted but now drawn. Heavy with worry, cloudy with confusion. It still manages to sound like an accusation as his eyes drop to the other's throat.]

What happened?

church

[evulsed]

[ Vanitas wakes up slow, blinks once, and then twice up at the ceiling.

Coming back from the dead is always the same. Like rising from a deep slumber. He's done it a few times now, probably more times than anyone should— but Vanitas isn't a normal person. He's never been what constitutes as normal. What's different about this is the way his body feels.

For a while, he'd been coming back here on his own, seeking out the spirit that lives underneath that trap door. She never came back up, not when he was awake. The only evidence of her presence being the blanket she would put over him, the way he'd be slightly manuevered away from where he would press his ear against the door like he could hear her moving around in the basement.

There's an ache in him, like a bruise, where that spirit had put it's obsidian sword through his body and carved him up like a hog. And when his eyes open, he's looking at the ceiling, because he's flat on his back, slightly elevated on one of the new pews that all the do-gooders of this town had made after he ransacked this place. The last time he woke up from death in his church had been— explosive. He'd left Unversed here, that time. He's left them all over this town.

He doesn't hear them in the shadows now. It's because when he died, they died with him.

Vanitas puts one gloved hand on the back of the pew and uses it to pull himself up into a seated position, looking down at himself. His armor is in tatters— where he'd been sliced open, where he'd broken his leg, where Rosalind had put that thing in his arm. It's a lost cause. He'll have to cast it away and make it anew. He puts one gloved hand into the gaping hole in his armor in his middle, and when he pulls it out it comes out clean, because his wounds are nothing but scars now.

It's almost strange, after seeing so much of his blood before. ]

[pearlstrings]

[He doesn't know how long it will take. The records Bruce has gathered thus far are inconclusive- people who have died here and returned do so at varying rates. There is no specific lapse to wait for, there is no estimate or equation to follow. It is a terrible thing in that way, a reminder of their own helplessness.

Bruce is not alone. He and Riku wait together but something about the energy of it suggests that they take these watches in shift. They rarely leave the building at all, but occasionally one will tear their eyes away. Someone will need to move, to get to their feet for the sake of something to do, a pause in the monotony. His eyes are closed when Vanitas materializes, if it could be called that. He doesn't see the moment that he arrives, or arises. His head is tipped back against the pew and his hands rest loosely atop his knees. His feet are still bare but he's combed his fingers through his hair- had Riku's help to take the sticks and leaves from it.

It's the sound of movement that brings his chin to his chest, that draws Bruce's attention to the pew where Vanitas's hand appears. And then part of his face.

Bruce does not stand up. He stays by Riku's side and instead says:]

Vanitas.

[evulsed]

[ He doesn't notice them until Bruce speaks up, and most of that is because— he isn't expecting anyone else to be there. Others that have died, maybe. Others that wake up in the pews— but when Bruce's voice cuts through the utter silence of the church and Vanitas turns his head, looks over the back of the pew and sees them there...

That isn't what they're doing.

It's possible that they died. Maybe that they woke up before him and stayed, but something about the posture suggests that isn't the case. Bruce slouches in the pew, and next to him, Riku dozes with his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling. Vanitas' brow furrows, and it's clear he's having difficulty parsing what he's seeing.

The gold of his eyes come back to Bruce. When he speaks, his voice is rough with disuse, and his confusion bleeds out any combativeness that may have existed there before. ]

What are you doing here?

[pearlstrings]

Your name was in the obituaries.

[Bruce has not yet died in Beacon and thus has not gone through the mysterious process of resurrection, but it is strange nonetheless to be sitting in these pews when he remembers suffocating, the skin boiling off of his bones under these very same floorboards. Vanitas looks... less concerned about his own death than he does with finding the two of them here. His voice is rough. Bruce wonders how long it's been, how many days. He'd been told that he was asleep for two weeks, but the finer points and the details within that frame are a mystery.

Riku is a soft, still weight beside him and though Bruce doesn't push to his feet as Vanitas looks between them, he does rest his hand on Riku's knee. The pressure is small, but just enough to gently encourage him to wake.]

[equinoctials]

[ It's less a compliment to the comfort of the pews or the atmosphere in the church that Riku dozes off than it is a testament to how exhausted he is. He hadn't meant to, not with someone to wait for and his company grieving twice the loss.

The black bomber jacket had been lended to Bruce to ward off the cold and in its stead, he wears a gray hoodie, the hood up for warmth... and partially because in the siege he hadn't really the resources to waste on washing his hair, now dull and disheveled.

Bruce chooses wisely, the gentle weight of his palm wakes him but without the alarm (or the potential for a drawn weapon) jostling would have caused. He inhales through his nose, glancing sideways at him through his pale lashes, starts to sit up--

And, drawn to look at what has caught Bruce's attention, Riku straightens at once. He looks for a moment like he might speak and something changes his mind, exhaling. It sounds, maybe, a little relieved. ]

[evulsed]

[ The response doesn't give him an answer to his question. Vanitas stares at them each with the sort of blankness that comes with incomprehension. If his name was in the obituary, it only really tells him that Robin is probably back. Whether that's good or not is mostly irrelevant to Vanitas, and all he does is circle back around to the present situation.

Bruce, as always, is mostly unflappable— and he can't make heads or tails of the relief on Riku's face. He frowns at them, and his eyes fall to Bruce's bare feet. Had he died after all, despite their combined efforts? Had the spirit got Riku after it skewered him?

Maybe it had been a waste of time in the end. Vanitas isn't sure that he got anything out of trying to help, besides his death.

He turns to swing his booted feet off the pew and sets then with a soft sound on the hardwood. It means he's facing the front of the church, and the light of the candles ahead brackets him, turning him into a shadow. ]

Your friends won't come back if you stick around.

museum

[evulsed]

[ Coming back from the dead isn't exactly routine, but the most morbidly intriguing thing about it is how everything just seems to keep going on. Death waits for nobody. Vanitas is familiar with loss, but experiencing it first hand in a different way— losing something he covets— the way the world keeps marching on is almost brutally fascinating. Riku said Bruce had lost someone, and where Vanitas normally would have found this wound to rub salt into he— stops.

They go back to the museum. Bruce explains what happened, what he saw underneath the church. Vanitas has no answers, and only more questions. Was she one of those cloaked figures? Was she not down there when he saw this vision? The truth is the museum is still there, and all that darkness is gone, and nothing really changes.

Well, almost nothing.

There's something different in Bruce, now. Something deep and dark. Vanitas can sense his grief, can feel it like a cat rubbing up against his leg, like claws in his shin demanding his attention. But Vanitas isn't his keeper, he's nobody's keeper, so if he wants to go out into the woods to do whatever it is he does— why should Vanitas bother to care?

It doesn't stop him sitting out in front of the museum, staring into the woods. Waiting.

He isn't sure what he's waiting for, but he knows it's coming. Like black clouds building on the horizon, threatening thunder and rain. Like the taste of ozone right before that first lightning strike. ]

[pearlstrings]

[He goes looking.

He meets Riku at the church and they find Vanitas there. They make their way back to the museum and slowly fall into their old patterns, their other obligations. He doesn't fuss over Vanitas- Bruce surrenders space, makes something to eat and watches Riku go. He tells Vanitas about the things he saw in the church and asks what he was listening for when they'd come to find him. And through it all he remains aware of the passage of time. How many minutes, how many hours. There isn't enough information about the deaths and resurrections in this place for Bruce to settle on an estimate; some people never return at all, some are gone for a significant stretch at a time, some are spotted in town before grief and worry even get a chance to settle.

Jim Gordon has been in mortal peril many times throughout his career, in his time serving Gotham. Bruce has been sick with fear more nights than he could count- had been compelled to go to the station, to reach out and touch just to be sure. They aren't family but he's more than a friend. Whatever they are to one another it would never be simple; Jim had appeared from the ether while the bodies of his parents were still cooling on the asphalt. Long before he needed a heading to steer by, he needed to be seen- he needed to be cared for. With age and experience Bruce can understand how much it cost, not simply on a professional level, but a personal one. How many people in the GCPD wanted to turn away from the case, avoid the publicity and the scrutiny that would come with it? How many times did Jim see the risk and accept it anyway?

Bruce goes looking.

He searches the most obvious places first; he revisits the church and makes his way to bonfire square. He combs the beach, goes to town hall, goes to the village. And then he begins to search the woods. It isn't reckless, he doesn't stray too far from the paths, he doesn't put himself in the path of danger because he has a purpose. He's doing this for a reason. And when it comes up empty he repeats the circuit.

The rise and fall of his chest comes quicker, a damp shuddering he pushes through. He calls Jim's name now and again, he stops short surrounded by trees and just listens- waits for the telltale sound of his feet. Waits for a reply. The waiting becomes an agony in and of itself.

But it is nothing compared to the moment of discovery.

Bruce steps and he hears something creak underfoot.
Everything becomes quiet in his head.

There's a pane of glass under the toe of his boot, splintered at one corner and separated from anything else. Bruce stops breathing. He stands very, very still- and when he bends to reach for it, to be sure that it's real, he stops short. The rest of Jim Gordon's lantern- smashed against the forest floor, gone cold and dark, lays less than a foot away.]

[evulsed]

[ Vanitas doesn't feel it first— his Unversed do. But that makes sense— they're the most raw version of emotion. They're untempered in some ways, pure in their feeling, and the pit of their darkness wants to consume even more voraciously than Vanitas himself. The Floods jerk up, like rabbits with their attention caught, beady red eyes going to the woods— and Vanitas hasn't even pushed to his feet yet before they start sprinting.

It's so dark that they disappear into the treeline long before they ever reach it. Even with the waxing moon above, their very nature means they flicker and vanish— but Vanitas doesn't need to see them to know where they're going.

He takes two slow steps forward, the gravel crunches under his feet and gives way to the soft crush of grass as he keeps moving, and picking up speed. He's running when he crosses the trees into the forest, and isn't even sure where the urgency comes from— he just lets instinct carry him forward. Tied to his belt, his lantern swings, casting uneven shadows all around him through the trunks of the trees when the canopy eats up the light of the moon. ]

[pearlstrings]

[Bruce has been cleaved in half; he exists in two places at once, here in the forest where he is almost-but-not-quite touching a pane of glass, and in a dark alley, surrounded by the wet, shallow rattle of his father's last breaths. There is no comparing it. Bruce has never stopped mourning because the pain has never paused. There are new things in his life, there are new people and new causes, new dangers- but the person he was and the future he might have had was murdered that night too. It was put in the ground between them.

Mostly he feels rage. It is a constant, eternal fire inside him. Time hasn't healed him, it hasn't turned the wound into a scar. Bruce wraps it in bandages and covers it in armor, but it never stops bleeding. The way this will never stop bleeding.

He stops thinking. Whatever Bruce might be able to parse or discern about the scene is lost around the primal surge of anger, agony, disbelief. He is hyperventilating and shock has closed over his head like a wave- swallowed up sight and sound. There is what he needs to be the truth: Jim Gordon cannot be dead, Jim Gordon cannot be gone- and there is what he's seeing. Bruce sounds like he's drowning. The breaths come too fast and he isn't, in the end, able to touch the pieces just as he hadn't been able to touch his mother or his father. His entire body starts to shake, not a fragile shiver. A violent quake.

Bruce's mouth is open, saliva tracks down his chin as he pants for air, suffocating on horror alone. He's had a panic attack before but is beyond recognizing the signs. He feels like he's dying. His heart is going to explode in his chest, the muscles in his throat are contorted, clamped down like a vice and Bruce reaches reflexively for his face as if he's trying to clear it, to open his own mouth. He starts to scream instead- sheer terror, an animal.]

[evulsed]

[ If it were a light, it would shine like a beacon. Like the lighthouse out there over the water, when it blinks slowly into the night. Vanitas doesn't hear the scream as such— he hears the echo of it on the tail of the sensation. An explosion of utter horror. Brutal, screaming agony.

His heart slams in his chest, a mallet taken to his ribcage that crashes over and over again until the thump of it smothers the pounding of his boots against the forest floor.

The feeling hits the Unversed first, flowing over them, engorging them to make them swell twice, three times their normal size. Vanitas brings up his keyblade as he comes upon them and cuts each one in half in two clean, practiced hits. They shatter outward, a burst of darkness that swirls into the night and rushes into Vanitas like a wave breaking against a cliffside.

It's then that his gaze goes down to Bruce, his crumpled form, and he can connect what he's feeling to the sight of it, then. The utter anguish, the way his heart feels like it will explode out of his chest— burst free from him and leave him to hemorrhage all over everything. His breath catches, mimics the rapid pace that Bruce's moves at. It floods out of Bruce, like a shattered dam, filling up the immediate area, water uncontrollably rising. Vanitas can taste that scream in his own throat, the way the muscle contracts. He's made this sound before. He knows it: That terrible realization of losing everything you need. Of your heart being cleaved, jagged, down the middle.

The keyblade vanishes from his hand and he stares, his yellow eyes like enormous lamps in the darkness.

Truthfully— he didn't think anyone else could feel this the way he could. ]

[pearlstrings]

[It's a floodgate- a dam that breaks and leaves nothing else in the way. There isn't anything to slow it down, to blunt the edges or redirect it. Bruce starts screaming but it isn't the single note it once was. It's every note left- it's the smell of blood on the pavement and the gunshot ringing in his ears, it's Alfred's broken back, it's Selina's glassy stare turned to the ceiling. It's the people he's watched die, the buildings that have been set on fire, that have been detonated while full of civilians.

He chokes on it, screams himself hoarse as his body bows forward so far that his forehead nearly touches the dirt. One hand reaches reflexively for the ground, desperate for something to hang onto and tilling empty earth instead- gouging at dirt, tearing leaves up. He reaches again, again, ripping up the ground around him as the sound mutates inside him. It's a shriek in the beginning because all he can think is no. No it isn't possible. No he's wrong. No this hasn't happened. No it's someone else. Until it becomes no I can't do this again, and no I refuse. No I won't let it.

Bruce has no weapon on him, there's nothing to lash out at or against or with. There's only this empty space where someone he loves is supposed to be and now isn't, the knowledge that he's responsible and that it doesn't change anything because the pain is never going to stop. The rage contorts him, makes him ugly and inhuman and Bruce feels all over again how much he wants to be dead too. How much he doesn't want to feel anything, how much he wants to burn everything to the ground, how much he wants revenge and doesn't care what he'll become in the process.

He doesn't know when he picks up the shard, only that it's in his hand, squeezed so tightly that it bites into the skin of his palm, the juncture between his fingers. He beats at the ground with the opposite, so wretched with pain that his body threatens to vomit- that he brings dirty knuckles to his face to smother the sound, cover his mouth when he can't seem to close it.]