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

[evulsed]

[ Vanitas doesn't expect anything, and so can't be surprised by what Bruce does— grabbing him like a life raft, as if Vanitas has any kind of skill to keep a person from drowning. But when he leans in, it means his forehead isn't against his crown anymore. Vanitas shifts with him, turns his forehead to Bruce's temple, keeps both hands on his neck and jaw. When Bruce puts his mouth against his shoulder and wails, it feels to him like Bruce is screaming right into his body, filling the void in him with the intensity of his anguish.

It claws up his throat, cinches it tight, rises as a garbled sound like a mirror to the sobbing. Vanitas' edges smudge as the darkness floods out of him in earnest, roiling like smoke, and the Unversed pull themselves up like disfigured birds. Little things covered in oil, disjointed and collapsing in on themselves as they try to flee into the woods.

Bruce heaves under the strength of his sadness and Vanitas doesn't realize when he starts echoing the sound, turning into a feedback loop of the animal pain of loss. He presses his face against Bruce's, close enough his tears are on Vanitas' cheeks, his eyelashes a wet pattern on his own skin.

Vanitas isn't tender. Instead, he swallows all that grief up and makes it his own, because he too knows what it means for a life to be destined for misery. To know it will never end. To want something so desperately and have it taken away.

Time loses meaning in that hurricane and Vanitas stays there in the eye of it until it blows itself out. ]