notlikeanyone: (ordinary life)
Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne (Jingleheimer Schmidt) ([personal profile] notlikeanyone) wrote in [community profile] multiversallogs2011-12-31 06:23 am

(no subject)

Who: Tim Drake-Wayne (in clever disguise) and Bruce Wayne (doesn't need a disguise)
What: Terrible ideas in undercover investigation go terribly.
Where: The Vault
When: A couple of days throughout the week that make sense!
Warnings: TBE STILL; mention of sexual activities and death; drugging, bondage, and assault.



It sucks to be stuck in a world completely separate and disparate from his own. Even with Conner there as a friend and support, Tim still hates being dragged away from home, and his family and other friends. He can deal with it, of course, he isn't about to let a little case of multidimensional kidnapping stymie him or stop him doing what he's always done, he just doesn't have to like it. So when he's not working (very slowly) on the possibilities for getting out of here, or looking into the job and housing market to prepare for the exit strategy to be a very long one, or keeping Conner company so neither of them get too bummed out or screwed up by this place - in between all of that, he's been doing his best to investigate the criminal state of Baedal. Carefully, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself - not from the criminal element or the militia, not just yet. So it's mostly been plain-clothes snooping, listening for rumours, talking to the right people or simply engaging the long process of finding out who the right people to talk to are. Some parts of the city remind him of Gotham, especially the underbelly, but the people are different, and he needs to build contacts, form a network, before he can really get anywhere.

Not that that stops crime from happening, still, and not that he's going to wait until he's in a completely secure position to start combating it.

One of the places he's heard rumours about is the Vault. A relatively new adult club offering entertainment from the sensual to the... less than reputable, from all accounts. It seems like a good place to start - it's new and popular enough to be attracting some of the larger names or their scouts, he's sure, and clubs like that are often a hotbed of illegal activity he should be keeping an eye on and working to shut down even if he magically doesn't manage to pin down any druglords or gang leaders.

He doesn't have much spending money just yet, so he has to work his disguise to a budget - nothing elaborate, jsut simple and effective. So the first time he shows up at the Vault, he has cheap but effective wash-in wash-out red dye in his hair, spiked into a different style, and simple black clothes on - trousers with a few decorative straps, leather boots, and a mesh shirt with leather straps that draw attention to certain areas but do nothing to hide the various scars he carries. He couldn't really afford enough make up to cover all of them effectively, even just his arms, and the kind of people he's looking to draw in most likely won't mind, so instead he's making a point of showing them off. That first time, he doesn't get in too deep, just hears some meaty rumours and buys or is bought a few drinks that he doesn't drink most of, and is left feeling that there's more to this place he needs to uncover.

It's the second time he shows up, with a reasonable gap not to seem over-eager but not so long he's unfamiliar, that he gets in a little deeper. He takes in a stage show and catches wind that he should really check out the more private offerings, and that's promising. He notices one or two familiar faces, some he's talked to and others he'd only seen before they vanished silently, while mingling in the main room - he recognises one of the men who seems to be a reoccurring but silent presence as someone he's gathered from eavesdropping is called Tom, but again, he isn't approached, and he carefully picks a moment when Tom isn't in sight to slip towards the more private, quieter areas of the club, just in case he's internal security of some kind.

His first stop is the bathroom - easy to explain, easy to eavesdrop, and often a first pick for an out of the way meeting place to conduct illicit transactions. And just as popular for consuming drugs, too, so he's hardly surprised to encounter a small huddle of junkies of some kind - it's in their body language and the suspicious looks they throw at him as he seemingly obliviously, seemingly drunkly sways his way into a stall. And then they apparently forget he's there, speaking in loud whispers to each other. Mostly nothing, but maybe he can overhear something useful about their suppliers, or names of drugs to look into.
caballero: (difference | weight)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
"Shut up," Bruce deadpans immediately, and it's neither companionable nor cruel, just... detached, because he isn't interested in dissecting whatever the hell is going on, there. Maybe he doesn't recognize him - and that would be fine, except that his luck never holds out quite that long. Shira and the bartender are twittering in an impressed way, ooing and aaing over the damage dealt. (It's just that kind of a club.) He asks if her boss will be pissed, and she just laughs.

It's all surreal. Bruce moves back and jimmies Tim's handcuffs off (magic). Once he establishes that the wounds on his torso are superficial, he hauls him up, familiar enough with the effects of that particular toxin to know he'll be disoriented for a while and nauseous later but otherwise fine. "You're done for tonight," he informs him, right back to the soft-spoken tone he used earlier, and doesn't make eye contact. Behind them, Shira kicks the ring leader in the back of the head when he groans, and he falls back into unconsciousness.
caballero: (day | slight)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 07:18 am (UTC)(link)
What a disturbing mind you have, Tim.

(Then again, in this setting...)

"Out," he says, but to Shira and the other employee, not Tim - who he's just going to.. cart along with him, yes, okay. Shira teeters ahead of them on her spindly heels, plainly entertained. (This shit is the norm, and it's not like her indestructible form and decades of combat training will ever land her in too much hot water in this place, but it's always nice when people she likes do sweethearted things.) She asks, "Do you want me to call Hasi?" and Bruce wrinkles his nose slightly. "She's not going to do anything besides give me crap for not paying one of your girls," he answers, talking over Tim like he's not there. And it's not true, anyway, but by now everyone knows who he usually comes to visit, and who to report gossip to. She'll hear anyway.

Shira lets them out one of the employee doors that takes them through a back hallway and out to the alley behind the building, and Bruce keeps quiet the entire time, aside from quietly saying goodnight to Shira, who twinkles her fingers at them before going back inside.

Bruce doesn't let go of Tim's elbow when they're out - he walks him along, steady. And silent.
caballero: (difference | core)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 07:50 am (UTC)(link)
In truth, he'd rather not be touching Tim at all, not because of any issues of wanting to crawl back into his little hermit world (well, not entirely), but rather because he can't imagine Tim would like to be touched right now, in any capacity. But the bio-drugs in his system means his choices are let Bruce guide him along, or fall. He keeps his touch clinical.

It takes him a while to respond. "I didn't think you'd regenerate."

Griss Twist is close to Bonetown, and though Bruce knows he could be 'home' in a few minutes, he chooses to take them across the river into Brock Marsh instead; he's got a few hole-in-the-wall safe houses by now where he doesn't live, just uses for emergencies and storage. Once they're on a main road, he gets the younger man into a rickshaw taxi -

- and just stops, looking at him with an almost blank expression, standing aside it.

At length, he discards the idea of just telling the driver to take Tim on his own back to the Valhalla Inn, and then sits next to him, quietly delivering the address.

"She's fine." (You know, by the way.)
caballero: (day | avalanche)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 08:38 am (UTC)(link)
"A lot of the girls that work those rooms do so deliberately, and have the physiologies to enable it," he tells Tim, still not looking directly at him, as if the lack of eye contact will somehow give him more space. "She wasn't one of them. I'm sure you saved her life."

For the first time, Bruce wonders if he's wrong. Maybe this isn't anyone he truly recognizes, and maybe Tim doesn't recognize him at all. But he can't be completely wrong, can he? It's too much of a coincidence, even if he'd like it to be. He should have sent Tim off by himself. (He couldn't.)

"That toxin'll wear off in about six hours." Bruce doesn't ask him if he's okay. He doesn't really look okay, but talking about it - especially with him - isn't going to be much help. At least, not in this little cab. So he keeps quiet besides that, and is thankful for the small miracle of the nearness to their destination.
caballero: (day | really?)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 09:04 am (UTC)(link)
The way this Bruce interacts with people is, yes, different; it comes and goes, in ways he can't know about, and had Tim not being himself but been the elder sycophant, maybe Bruce would be speaking to him differently now. But he just doesn't know what to say.

"I could have hauled you out when you first walked in, too."

That sounds flat and a little irritable, beneath the surface of the oddly quiet way he talks. His accent is sometimes indistinct, the washed-out bland Americanness of someone who's either had a long time to practice sounding like what he isn't, or a long exposure to sounding like something else entirely. It's in those little cracks that the old, Palisades New Jersey starts to creep in. (The more emotional he gets, the more Gotham bleeds through in his voice.)

They stop in a busy, gritty area of town, with cramped street-level shops and noisy, run-down blocks of apartments built on top of them. Bruce pays the driver and then helps Tim get out. To get where they're going, they have to go down an alley and find the back stairwell behind a building whose ground floor houses a corner market and a coffee shop, so that they can climb a dark, narrow stairwell into the rows of industrial apartments.
caballero: (day | electric)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-02 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
The apartment is small, and might be cramped if it was properly furnished; there's nothing in it to give any clues about who might inhabit it, no leftover plans, no forgotten laundry. It's immaculate, but not dust-covered, so he does use it, apparently. He directs Tim to sit down, flipping on the light in what passes for a living room, before going to pull out the appropriate supplies from the medical supply drawer of a cabinet.

When he's there, Tim makes his assertion, and Bruce stills. He doesn't freeze, he just pauses.

It's neither the flat-out determination of his identity he logically expected, nor the doe-eyed inquiry he feared. It's worse.

So he just doesn't say anything. He picks out everything he needs to go about fixing the cuts on Tim's stomach, because as small as they are, they've really bled, and they need to be cleaned and sealed. Infections here are unpredictable, thanks to the vast mixing of germs and matter from across the multiverse.

When he turns, he meets Tim's eyes for the first time, silent and stony but without any denial.
caballero: (day | disfigure)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
He isn't teared up, there's no emotional quivering edges to him; he's uncomfortable, yes, but it isn't because someone mentioned his father. (Hell, he'll talk about his parents, and at length, given the right opportunity.) It's everything, it's this whole stupid situation, that could have been avoided if his alternate self (selves) wasn't doing this. Everything goes back to that, and the coldness it makes him feel. This boy shouldn't be able to hit that button; he shouldn't know it exists.

Bruce goes to his side, directs more than nudges him to settle where he needs him so that his wounds can be looked at. He pushes his sleeves to his elbows, takes off the bracer on his wrist, cleans his hands - doesn't respond. Not until he pulls a pair of latex gloves on.

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to."

Maybe Tim wouldn't have recognized him.

Maybe Tim wouldn't have gotten himself tied up and drugged.
caballero: (day | civilian)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 06:53 am (UTC)(link)
Bruce flicks his gaze up, brief. I'm not angry. He's just irritated, Tim, this is pretty much the default state of Bruce Waynes in any reality; if he was angry, the entire block would notice.

The worry with cuts - beyond the fact that Tim has puny human antibodies from just his own Earth - is the possibility for them to react with the bio-toxin, or pass it to Bruce if he touches his skin for too long or, worse, his blood. So the care he takes is deliberate, even though it's clear from the way he works that his touch is normally a gentle one. (Odd.) He cleans them, presses down carefully on Tim's abdomen to make sure there's no swelling or signs of irritation from the toxin in his blood mixing with the air, and then cleans them again so he can stitch them up.

Finally: "None of you exist in my world."

It's one hell of a loaded statement.
caballero: (day | improvements)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 08:54 am (UTC)(link)
Bruce has walked through enough worlds to know about the version of himself who raises these children for slaughter, and he hates the knowledge of it. He knows there's more to it, between the injured way Grayson had flinched silent on the subject and that woman with the mask and her infant. There's more of them, he knows it. And it's completely unacceptable. Tonight is easy proof of that.

He considers expressing concern - discards it.

"The older one was more competent." Deliberate. His voice is flat, and he cuts off the edge of the violet suture thread. He doesn't want to use names; he got along with Richard. Even liked him, grudgingly. It's unsettling, now, to know that this Tim isn't the one he interacted with, doesn't know the older boy that he knew.

"You should consider a real job." He starts on the last cut.
caballero: (day | pause)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 09:30 am (UTC)(link)
"You've been here for almost a month."

It would sound like somebody's nagging mother if it wasn't so flat and creepy. Why are you watching him, Bruce? (...Why does that need to be asked?)

With his injuries patched up - and comments about Dick thoroughly ignored - Bruce wipes any remaining blood down and cleans up his work. Tim'll be fine. They aren't the prettiest stitches in the world, but they'll work just fine; Bruce has always been better at getting injuries than mending them. He rises, goes across the room to the small kitchen to put the tools he was using in a steel tin he's presumably keeping for sterilization, and then gets a glass of water. Not for him.

He sits back next to Tim and places the glass near the younger man's head, eying him with an air that says perhaps he should take this opportunity to hydrate himself. "It'll be out of your system by the time you wake up."
caballero: (day | the line)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Not the hand-to-hand combat skills, young man.

There's a pause, and it almost feels incredulous, even though his reaction is more uncertain than irritated. "Do you want to see him now?"

Bruce doesn't sound like he believes Tim really wants to see anyone - or have anyone see him - like this.
caballero: (day | family)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-03 11:08 pm (UTC)(link)
He doesn't want to work in the arena, because Tim isn't a moron.

There's no reaction past his first assertion, and Bruce waits for the but he knows his coming. As he thought; and so it's a non-issue. (If Tim had been contrary and said yes, call him Bruce would have simply shrugged and refused. This is already one more person than necessary in one of his safe houses.)

He's quiet for a while, watching him.


"Go to sleep."

It's more gentle than one might expect, and too soft-spoken to be a real order - he's not used to giving orders, but all the same, it's clear he's not used to anyone just not listening to him, either. Bruce stands up again, and goes to pull another blanket and pillow from the closet for Tim, who should be pretty exhausted by now. They'll deal with getting him back to his friend in the morning, when his head isn't full of xenian toxins.
caballero: (day | progress)

[personal profile] caballero 2012-01-04 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
He doesn't answer; he's not going to give him any more shit for it (he's been through enough), but it's not going to tell him that it's fine, either (it isn't). It is what it is, and while it is not Tim's fault, because being assaulted is never the fault of anyone besides the person doing the assaulting, there is a difference between the girl he traded places with and someone who wants to be a crime fighter. These are the risks. The judgment is just as brutal and unfair.

Bruce rises, leaves him, and goes about doing something else - silently. He won't wake him up at any point. Tim needs the rest.

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