if travel is searching and home has been found

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Wayne, Poison Ivy, and some unwelcome guests.
What: Refugees from the Spatters raids are found by the Militia. The Militia is found by someone else.
Where: Barrackham, the forests. Later, the moonpools.
When: A bit after Ivy's arrival.
Notes: /DEVOURS THE LOG COMM
Warnings: Violence and police brutality against minors, xenophobia, mind control/coercion references, will edit more as needed. (DC characters bring the party.)

In the lingering aftermath of the raids in the Spatters, many people refused to return - they were afraid, mostly, and with good reason; but plenty had nowhere to return to now, either, with their property damaged beyond use, or deemed condemned by the city. Homes full of books, clothes, toys, heirlooms, lives - taped over and written off, with no regard for the souls that lived inside. Word amongst the refugees (what other word do they have?) is that the Militia isn't done with them - they're still hunting down those who fled, because vagrancy is a crime. It's not enough, it'll never be enough, until hey are forever silent. Gone.

In the woods south of the city, but not quire the farmlands, some refugees have finally stopped moving. They have children, and lives, and they have to try to move on, even in small degrees. They erect tents, begin to work as they can - one mother, Sharial, does laundry for a farmer while her children practice reading amongst the trees, with her sisters. It's uncomfortable and it's dirty, but the weather's better than in the Spatters, and when she comes home from a day at work and sees her children playing, scales shining, tails fat, she feels almost okay.

The day she comes home and her sister meets her halfway, sobbing, dress torn, it's another story. Her heart sinks, and she hears commotion in the distance already through the trees (the locals, the Elves, always hide in such silence when outsiders come). Through the sound of low voices and cruel laughter, she hears her youngest son scream.

Comments

[caballero]

He knows she knows who Bruce Wayne is - whether personally or not, he can't imagine she didn't expect him to at least recognize her, given what there is to recognize. He also knows she didn't buy his brush-off of being called on it, but - well, maybe she'll be convinced over time, if he keeps it up. It's a crap shoot. The alternative is to just go ahead and confirm it, and see where it leads.

Despite his paranoia, he's got more to gain than lose, probably.

"Pam Isley."

A muted statement (accusation?) but not a question. There's no way she'd recognize him and not be who she reminds him of from home, in some parallel world.

[mayqueen]

For a split second her eyes narrow and her whole body goes rigid and she does not like to hear her old name. Not from Bruce Wayne, or whatever else Bruce Wayne might happen to be. The only person who still calls her Pam back home is Riddler, not because of any friendly understanding between them but because he's long since been made aware that she doesn't find him worth the energy she'd expend on killing him. Even the Arkham staff understand that Poison Ivy is not a sobriquet but her entire self; she was one thing once, and she's another now.

But whatever echo of herself exists in his Gotham is apparently not so fussy about issues of nomenclature, and she forces herself to relax marginally.

"Not any more."

[caballero]

The confirmation that this woman knows an older Bruce Wayne is not shocking to him; most everyone he's come across does. It's something that grates on him, frankly, the patronizing sense that comes with it, the fascination, like he's a museum exhibit or an unearthed time capsule to people from a technicolor world he can't understand. He wonders if he still looks young, or if the lifestyle's taken too much of a toll on him by now - two years ago in a bar in between worlds, some guy named Richard Grayson followed him into the damn bathroom before he realized they were about the same age and nearly choked on his own tongue skittering away. This is - not that, not by far, and even with the venom in that look she shoots him, it's better. In perhaps a completely contextually inappropriate way, he feels comforted by being disdained a bit. (That there are things wrong with Bruce is not new information.)

Once more, he raises his hands: a concession, it won't happen again.

"What can I call you?"

[mayqueen]

It occurs to her, very briefly, that she could say absolutely anything. Even if this place is lousy with Gothamites, people who know her better than this particular Bruce Wayne does, they have no way of knowing she knows them - if there are two versions of Gotham there could be hundreds. She could clothe herself in the camouflage of something altogether less toxic and lay low, at least for a while.

But she's already burnt out any possibility of her being considered benign by at least one significant facet of Baedal's population, and even if she hadn't, it's not a façade she's particularly interested in cultivating. She hates masks.

"Ivy. Poison Ivy."

[caballero]

But not highly on-the-nose monickers, apparently. (If there is any impulse to raise an eyebrow or balk even in the slightest, it's smothered out of half politeness and half "Batman" isn't subtle either.)

"It's nice to meet you, Ivy." Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. He's something-like-satisfied she was there to wreck those agents, anyway. And then, flatter: "I'm Tom."

It's clear he doesn't expect her to believe he's not Bruce, but if she doesn't have to go by her birth name, then neither does he. Tom is how he's known here, and it's the name he uses - presumably it's not as stealthy to a Gothamite who knows Thomas Wayne exists, but it's mild enough to be getting on with, in any event.

sorry about the late!

[mayqueen]

"If you insist," she says, chin tilting up a little, enough there in her tone and posture to let him know she finds this ridiculous but she's accepting it. She's a lot of things but you couldn't accuse her of subtlety, generally speaking. "Are we likely to speak again?"

Nothing to hint at whether or not she's in favor of that happening, not least because she hasn't decided one way or another just yet.

no worries brah!

[caballero]

"If you want to," he supposes. Bruce doesn't make a habit out of inflicting his presence on anyone (especially women) who don't welcome it - hell, even the people who do want to ransom his time for socialization have to crowbar it a little. There are other avenues and other people for her to go through to be critical of the Militia that aren't via him.

He digs a slightly beat up business card out of his pocket (it looks like he's been carrying it around for a while; he sticks another one that looks like it's for take-out back in his pocket) and offers it to her, still keeping his distance.

"That's the address for a group who'll help people like who were camping out here. They don't charge anything and they don't require identification. If you come across anyone else, it might be safer for them to start hiding in plain sight."

Versus out here, isolated and alone. (Until now?)

let's try this once more

[mayqueen]

She reaches out halfway with her hand and lets a vine extend from her wrist to close the rest of the distance, snatching the offered card. Her eyes flicker over the type for a second, long enough to absorb the salient information, not long enough to let Bruce - sorry, Tom - leave her peripheral vision.

"And I suppose you have no guarantee, beyond your ample trustworthiness, that this isn't simply a front for the Militia to round up its more evasive clientele." If it was 'her' Bruce she probably wouldn't have said it, but she isn't going to make any assumptions about 'Tom's' opinion on social cleansing.

8D

[caballero]

There was a time when her vine-appendages might have weirded him out. That time was before he got stuck in the thirties with Cthulhu. Somewhere in the back of his head, Bruce laments that kind of naivety. (Sigh.)

"You could always scope it out, I guess." Something like a verbal shrug is buried in his tone. He can't make her trust or believe him, so he's not going to do a song and dance to try. She can scope it out or she can chuck the card - the important thing is he passed along the opportunity. And besides: "There'd be less convoluted ways for me to try and screw you over, if I actually wanted to."

[mayqueen]

She gives the card another passing glance, then it disappears into the leafy thicket she's wearing.

"I don't doubt it." And she wasn't thinking of herself so much as the family he redirected. But she'll leave that there; she has, after all, come from an environment where needless convolution is a way of life and the mere existence of simpler means isn't a reason to use them.

"Thank you for the information." It's not so much actual courtesy as a means of underlining that their meeting is over.

[caballero]

He could have sent that family right into approaching backup, had he wanted to do that. Convolution isn't really his thing (unless it needs to be, of course). But he nods, accepting if not polite.

No ninja tricks here, when he leaves - he just grabs the leather lead below his horse's bridle and heads out, picking a slower path through the trees north to Sobek Croix proper. Zipping back to his apartment or Stoneshell at the moment might look suspiciously convenient, so. Time for another vaguely irritating day out.