multiversallogs | it seems like everything i've heard just might be true

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it seems like everything i've heard just might be true

Who: Bruce Wayne, some Militia agents, and the fog. Later, Seoraj.
What: The jig isn't up, but only by chance.
Where: Serpolet and beyond. Eventually, Stoneshell.
When: Yesterdayish.
Notes: Batman can't win every time, also the Militia sucks. In this post, asskickings, and also an explosion; if anyone has a character in Serpolet they might have seen/heard it.
Warnings: Violence! Also fog horrors. And uh, feelings.

Bruce's primary thought as he flattens himself further against the wall is that he really, really should have seen this coming. So far he's not sure how, but there's a solution to every equation, and the fact that he missed this is bothering him almost as much as the fact that it's happening.

The safehouse he's been keeping in Serpolet doesn't hold the full-stop keys to his plans or identities (nothing does, he isn't stupid), but there's enough in there that he doesn't want someone clever enough to find the flat in the first place getting their hands on. He arrived as soon as the alarm pingback alerted him, but now he's stuck unable to get closer – Militia agents are already inside and casing the rest of the building, prepping to begin to tear the place apart. He's been waiting to see if they'll clear out of the apartment itself, even for just a minute – he can't let them keep any of it or pull any of it out, but he really doesn't want to have to do what's beginning to look like an inevitability as the minutes tick by. When he hears the one in charge give a decisive sounding order and the tell-tale noise of a sledgehammer hitting drywall, his stomach turns.

Telling himself that it's not any different from when Logan kills people in front of him doesn't actually help. He clicks the detonator in his pocket anyway.

The explosion is immediate and devastating. He rigged it – like every location he uses – to pulverize everything inside of it past the point of use, recognition, or reconstruction. Practically, he's going to be irritated at the loss of the supplies he had there – but morally? There were Militia agents in there. Barring xenian powers, there's no way they'll survive the blast. Bruce would be on his way to a guilt-filled spiral if not for the sudden pale purple constructs that slam into him the second he moves.

For a heartbeat (that feels like an eternity), Bruce has no idea what's going on. The impact leaves him dazed, breathless, somewhat crushed – literally – his hands scramble against the thing that's crushing him and he recognizes it as a telekenetic projection. His brain tries to put together how the hell they saw him, where they came from, how- he feels a rib crack, the pain is sharp enough to yank him out of his daze; he sees the woman who must be the culprit, hooded, standing at the bottom of the alley, her fist extended towards him. Bruce manages to slam his arm on the crumbling wall behind him in a desperate attempt to activate a device he's not even sure will work, but might buy him a second if it does-

It does, the frequency tearing through the space around him and causing immediate ear-splitting feedback from all Militia communication devices (and, something he'll have to think about later, sparking from the force-pike he can see from up here, attached to her back). It breaks her concentration enough that the construct flickers, and Bruce drops down and bolts – the noise also gives him a timely head's up about the squadron of agents barreling up the stairs after him. Great. Over the side of the building it is, then-- and immediately, he's hit with the telekenetic construct again, and slammed into the opposite building's brick wall. Something breaks; he's not paying attention to the pain. When the pressure suddenly lets up, he's not comforted; indeed, the sudden looming humanoid figure rushing at him must be her superior. He takes the hit and his ears ring, but it's worth it to get the guy in close enough to grab him and pull - the crack and the noise he makes means his arm broke, but the sound of clamoring footsteps means this isn't going to be a one-on-one fight.

Beggars can't be choosers. When he makes it out, the Spatters is a fine option as any, even if he can barely see and he tastes blood (too much of it) in his mouth. But the Spatters are still too close, and he knows he only scraped out by half a breath-- he stumbles further east, blindly, and when he finally falls, it's down an incline littered with broken (bones?) matter and plants that move in ways not dictated by the air.

Fog closes in where he was standing, and Bruce doesn't get up.

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That, more than the Militia announcement - it changes a lot, and draws a line in the sand, but he'd knew it was coming sooner or later - gives him pause. Seoraj doesn't ask what he does because it's safer that way, even though lately the lines of trust have blurred and he's been... careless, maybe. Asking in the open does another turn in his head, and he remembers Ducard (himself) in the fog.

What is he doing to himself anymore?

Instead of answering, he gives Seoraj a brittle half-smile and a look that's more apologetic than anything.

The fleetingly odd look on Seoraj's face is a realization - presumably that he really did just ask that out loud instead of stifling it in his head, and the lack of an answer makes him wonder what made him think he might get one. He shakes his head, pushing his hair back (clean, damp, unbraided) and turning his attention back to the tea he's supposedly drinking.

“No mind,” he says, putting it down to tiredness instead. A long few days. It is what it is. “I've an ear to the ground here. There's them as have decided.” What they think happened; what it means, moving forward. And it's interesting, the times when Seoraj does and does not lump himself in with 'the locals'.

"There won't be any containing it soon," he says quietly. "The knowledge of it, at the very least."

People will notice. There's no way to have that sort of announcement and pretend there isn't tension, that there isn't a reason why people aren't sitting quietly any longer. He thinks of Thames, and CAMB, and every other group defiant enough to operate peacefully in the open; they'll be raided, and soon.

They all knew the risks.

He finishes his tea in silence, not sure what to say-- but mostly lost in thought. By the time he's finished drinking he's had about enough contemplating - his head's still off in space, it feels like, and so he sets his empty cup aside and stands up, unbandaged hand going to Seoraj's shoulder and giving him a softer look than before. C'mon. You were going to bed anyway.

It takes him a minute, somewhere in his own head, but he catches up to the present moment and covers Bruce's hand before he stands, too. The house is quiet and so are they; when it looks like he might say something, he doesn't. All things considered, he's not so sure what he'd have to say.

(Probably covered it with 'motherless son of a goat'.)

Halfway up the stairs, he does say, very mildly, “You know, there are easier ways to get me into bed.”

"Well."

(Stairs are still kind of weird.)

"..There is now."

Hey Seoraj, remember when you were completely weirded out by all of this and had to have a silent panic hour? How far things have come.

But Bruce is injured, so he can't get cuffed for that, hah - he can try and figure out what the hell 'his elf' tied him into, though.

Seoraj successfully quashes the impulse to jab him testingly in the ribs again (in case he's broken them again), but his hand does sort of drift tellingly in that direction on the way to not doing it, dousing the lights instead. The house is locked up, and it's as safe as houses are like to get in this place, which makes him as close to relaxed as a man is going to be, here, too. As opposed to the panic.

It's unsettlingly domestic, actually, which he's never really had occasion to notice before, and that gives him more pause than he'd had trying to figure out where exactly his hands go on another man's body.

Which doesn't mean he doesn't prefer it to the waiting. Flippantly, as he closes the windows in his bedroom-- “D'you come with instructions this time?” Speaking of what's tied to him.

The only thing that saves Bruce from slightly uncomfortable fears of domesticity is the fact that he doesn't actually know what domesticity feels like, having successful escaped anything and everything even resembling a normal childhood or family situation his entire life. Even before his parents died, it was a charmed, fairy-tale existence. This is... its own.

"No," he says, and it almost sounds like a complaint. "Do you want to give me a hand?" A beat. "Since one of mine is--" he raises his bandaged left hand like, yeah, laces suck with this.

The entertained look Bruce gets for that complaint is something Seoraj can neither help nor be blamed for, all things considered. He lets the curtain fall at the window (a thin sliver of dim outside light knifes through the room) and makes a 'give us a look' gesture with one hand. “That answers one thing,” he says, amiably. “Frustrating dead men with tight laces can't be nearly as entertaining.”

-presumably the elf in question didn't do all this expressly to annoy Bruce, but that's not as funny.

Maybe he did.

"I'm sure if they thought I was dead, they'd have just buried me or sold my organs, or something." Bruce, that is the most uncharitable idea of elves anyone has ever had.

But he does manage to get out of - some of it, while some of it has to stay on, and even though he has it in his head to stay awake and go over some things mentally for a while, he's already starting to feel exhausted again. Goddamnit.

Once the bandages and lacings are sorted and the house feels properly quiet again, without quite so much of the spectre of elves illegally farming human organs hanging over them, Seoraj says, “You should sleep,” because he can see Bruce's mind working, there, and it'll probably go better with rest. “Think in the morning.”

Bruce makes a noise like 'hm' and it manages, somehow to communicate that while it's very sweet Seoraj knows him well enough to make that observation, it's highly inconvenient when he's trying to talk himself out of being responsible. (It's irritatingly common, that dichotomy, his brain is always outworking the rest of him, frustrated and restless.)

He doesn't argue, though, and instead lays his palms against Seoraj's chest.

"Thanks."

“I just picked your arse up,” Seoraj says, with quiet and genuine affection, letting himself relax enough to sink a little into the mattress, not holding tense like he's waiting for something. His tone isn't as dismissive as the words he uses; there's an ease of closeness that he hasn't always had, somehow tenuous and steadfast at once.

Human contradiction is a fascinating thing. There are words for that, like 'cognitive dissonance', but mostly to Seoraj it's just- what it is.

Seoraj is better at this whole communication thing than Bruce is, so he figures he knows what he means anyway - and so, sleep happens; he'll go back to over-working himself in the morning. Hopefully he'll feel less nauseous about his hand, and get to bypass pathetically asking Seoraj to look under the bandage first. He'll be fine, elves are helpful. It's just the whole sensation of it splitting apart he's having trouble forgetting. Fun times.

He doesn't dream.

(Yet.)

The following morning, Seoraj wakes as early as is his habit; the sun isn't risen yet, but the air's changed and so have the sounds filtering in from outside. He rolls from where he'd bracketed the side of Bruce when he stirs, hand over his mouth, the past night recalled in morning clarity, when he can take a moment to dwell on the fact that the strangest parts of this are never what startle him any more.

It occurs to him that he's been in Baedal more than a year, and the thought slows him down long enough that he's not out of bed as quick as he might otherwise have been.

Uuughhh no.

That's the closest thing to a coherent thought that Bruce has when he registers someone else awake near him, waking up automatically - and then immediately rolling over and shoving his face against a pillow and refusing to acknowledge the world beyond being asleep. Which he is no longer. So he's not going to be able to get back to it. Which sucks.

Hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant, disdainful of all true rest and safety. Still the actual polar opposite of a morning person.

Muffled and oh so grudging: "The sun's not even up yet."

Mercilessly a morning person, Seoraj laughs low and quiet, abandoning his train of thought (at least for the next couple of minutes) to roll over in turn, resting lightly against the back of Bruce's shoulder - still watchful not to lean too much of his weight, given last night. “Good morning to you, too.”

No sympathy.

Bruce likes mornings in terms of 'when the sun rises'; he likes the quiet of pre-dawn, the last cold air before the light breaks through. He likes staying awake for two, three days at a time, and only sleeping when there's no possibility of restless, mind-racing, sleepless nights.

Waking up, though, is something else.

He mumbles something that sounds a little like I feel like I've been hit by a truck, though it's actually worse than that (and he knows what being hit by a truck feels like).

Then, with extreme dignity, he drags half the pillow over his head.

Edited 2012-09-27 10:10 (UTC)

Waking up is the best part of the day, in Seoraj's opinion, because it's usually the part that comes before things start going awry. Bruce is not the first, and probably won't be the last, to find that attitude a little obnoxious at five or six in the AM. He kisses his spine, between his shoulderblades, and says, conversationally, “So you don't want any tea, then.”

(It's almost like the Militia isn't hanging over their heads- Seoraj can stay in bed a while longer, for that illusion.)

Everything is already always awry, the cynical optimist would say, but a few minutes of sheer unabashed childishness is probably more than enough. And besides, lures of tea and whatever it is Seoraj is doing behind him is -

- oh, right, hit by a truck, mauled by fog monsters. Bruce attempts to move and freezes (sort of obviously) before very carefully repositioning how he's going to do this. Maybe he should have stretched or something, after being tossed like a sack of dead cats onto the other man's lawn by a cranky elf.

"Tea sounds great." His voice does not.

“Aye. You sound like you need it.” He weighs the likelihood of convincing Bruce to rest his bones and actually stay in bed for at least the duration of tea, but now that he's awake- well, if he knew about the fog monster then he'd strap him to the bed and not in the way he enjoys, but since straight answers aren't Bruce's stock in trade, he kisses his shoulder and slides free of the covers. “Want anything else?”

Bruce finally manages to sit up, looking slightly worse for wear but at least not on the brink of death. Those elves did good work, and he would surely be six feet under (or in the digestive tract of some beast) without them. It'd be a shame to push himself too far in the wake of such delicate healing - but life's a shame, sometimes. He makes a noise that passes for his version of Whatever you're having, and manages to slink away to shower.

It's there that he forces himself to take the bandages off of his hand. It doesn't feel like it's oozing, and he'll rewrap it if he needs to, but he has to know. He wasn't given any ominous warnings about taking it off and just - it's his damn hand. He experiences one terrifying, slightly embarrassing moment where he honestly considers asking Seoraj to look at it first and tell him if it's still in one goddamn piece, but he viciously smothers that impulse and pulls the wrappings off.

And it's fine.

His hand is whole, unblemished - besides what nicks and scars and roughness was there prior to that incident. Definitely sore, particularly in the center where the majority of those needle-teeth were, but otherwise fine. Which is honestly more disturbing than if there'd been a scar, or stitches, or anything. Unsettled, he finishes up and re-bandages everything that needs re-bandaged. Including his eerily healed hand. He decides to leave it bandaged until it's not sore anymore, so that he doesn't have to look at it and feel disturbed.

When he resurfaces, he seems more human.

Edited 2012-09-27 22:20 (UTC)

Breakfast is never anything particularly fancy in Seoraj's house - he's been known to get creative over the past year in lunch or supper, but breakfast remains roughly the same, tending to consist of bread, cheese, and maybe fish if there's been something fresh he likes the look of. Tea is light, then, so one taste doesn't overpower the other unpleasantly, and it's not the worst start to the day available, since the woman who bakes his bread is at least one of them still speaking to him.

“Eat something,” he says. “Do you a world of good.” Probably. It could also aggravate his stomach and make him hurl, but he doesn't look that kind of delicate, presently, so Seoraj is making an educated guess that he should probably not attempt whatever the rest of his day is going to be on tea and agitation.

Agitation is such a wonderful motivator, though.

Bruce splits the difference with bread and tea, opting out of cheese on the off chance food is going to make him sick. The only thing wrong with his stomach that he can detect so far is the psychosomatic unease, and he's never let that have a say in anything he does.

Eventually, "I'm probably going to be laying low for a while."

Which is different than him laying low here, because if it's something he needs to point out, it means he likely won't be in contact with anyone.

Edited 2012-09-28 02:03 (UTC)

It merits a stillness in the process of pulling bread apart, although Seoraj doesn't rightly stop what he's doing; pauses for the short span of time it takes him to absorb what that means and then continues, slicing cheese and wrapping it in bread. Restrained enough not to make the same mistake twice in a row, he doesn't ask why- and in the broad strokes, he doesn't really need to. He can guess. There's a reason he was burning records last night.

“Mind yourself better this time,” he suggests, instead, conscious of a slight tendency to cluck like a mother hen. “Your elf's got his own business, more'n likely.”

"I didn't get his number, anyway." Please, imagine the elves showing up to collect their CiDs on their eighteenth. But his voice is quiet, accepting that suggestion - not agreeing, but the lack of flippancy in his tone says he'll try. He doesn't actively seek to make anyone worry, though mainly because he's not used to having anyone that would. He sees now that Rachel's fear was sometimes of him instead of for him, and he thinks... in spite of it all, of himself, Marion probably would have stayed. Strange as it seems.

Seoraj could be made a saint. Bruce will never understand him.

He sits quietly for a while even after he's finished eating.

Sometimes, Seoraj has trouble understanding himself - he goes so fiercely at the world, in his way, and it's funny the things that sneak up on him while he's so focused on something else. -'things', it's usually people, and people are easier to carry with him when he can wear an earring or drink a kind of tea. People who sit quietly across from him and nod towards making an effort not to worry him, he doesn't know what to do with that, exactly.

He has a passing, mad urge to just say thank you, but he isn't as grateful as he thinks he probably should be. Mostly he feels tired, right now, and relieved, and frustrated, and- he likes this tea. Anyway.

“You need anything, before you do?”

"No." It's quiet still, because he doesn't want to burden him further but also because he doesn't need much; Bruce is self-sufficient in a terrifying way. Even people who know about Batman might look at him and think he needs his millions and his mansion, but it's just not true. He gets by without oxygen, sometimes.

He gets up and moves closer. He leans over, hands against Seoraj's face, and kisses him. No, he doesn't need anything. He could want something though, and that's just as rare - maybe not the impulse, but letting go. He's an alien to himself in Baedal now. A stranger. He doesn't know himself.

He'll let Seoraj know him for a while, he seems to be better at it today.

“No, he says,” Seoraj murmurs, leaning his forehead against Bruce's, like maybe you do because even implication he doesn't quite get as far as and it's me. (In his head, it varies whether he thinks of him as Tom or as Bruce but what it means isn't uncertainty so much as a feeling that the names don't dictate much, at least not about where they stand. Of all the things that make him pause, that's not one.)

He wishes that when he says no it could be more of a lie - but this is who he is. Or it is sometimes. Or now, or never - it's hard to tell. He's become stagnated in Baedal. Not because of Seoraj, or Hasibe, or Vanessza, or Kalinda, or the way he works a nine-to-five while doing while he does. Maybe it's because he watches people die and isn't a monster; he feels like his eyeteeth have been torn out, and yet he's doing so many terrible things.

He wishes he could be himself with these people. Properly himself. He doesn't know if he's lying to Seoraj, and so he's not sure if he wants to.

Make this make sense, for just a minute. He doesn't care if he's in pain - it's just pain. The sun's not properly up yet. There's time, before he melts away.

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it seems like everything i've heard just might be true

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