bruce "i'm kin with bats" wayne (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pearlstrings) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
logsinthenight2019-12-03 09:08 am
pearlstrings) wrote in logsinthenight2019-12-03 09:08 am
Entry tags:
closed
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.]
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.]
no subject
an immediate flood of defensiveness, and his eyes narrow.
he's died. he came back, he's lived through everything since then, only with the slightest nagging at the back of his mind that he probably shouldn't even be alive. that it would be better in a fuller sense if he weren't-- after all, the Lazarus Pool has brought its share of struggles. but it takes everything in him to fight that defensiveness, and the tight line it draws in his body. he doesn't want to lash out, but he knows he's going to. ]
I'm not afraid. [ he can't help the anger that trembles in his voice at that word ] I just have no expectations anymore. You think I haven't put it into words? That I didn't immediately try to figure out why you erased me, and then left the man who killed me alive?
That I didn't try to deal with being replaced, and then disowned? And when all of that fell through, that I tried to do things the "Batman" way, for all the good it fucking did me?
You don't know what you're asking.
no subject
What he'd meant by afraid was that he could understand what it meant to look at a box, sealed by every possible lock and to have someone asking to open it. But what he meant doesn't matter. You erased me, Jason says. And Bruce can't find it in himself to think it out of character- not when he's seen what he does to his own pain. Left the man who killed me alive. Bruce has killed two people already and destroyed everyone he loved in the process. This too he believes himself capable of.
Bruce watches him, and is lapsed profoundly into silence- a mute witness.]
no subject
it threatens to oppress everything around them as fully as the darkness does, as Jason observes the pensiveness written on Bruce's face. the lack of reaction.
silence is assent. silence is an admission as loud as any protestations.
it leaves jason alone in all of the admissions he's just given. the information he didn't want to share, and the uncomfortable acknowledgement that he isn't over it. that he will never be over it. and that until the end of time, he's always going to be Sisyphus. He would never be able to move Bruce. and it can only be a second, a moment in time, but it feels like agony.
he looks away and as smoothly, grabs his gun. and makes to grab his boots.
he couldn't take it anymore. ]