there is a community of the spirit.

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Wayne Tom and you.
What: Creeping out from the fringes and the shadows, investigating the city through a closer lens.
Where: Various areas in Baedal, mostly the central districts, and along the river.
When: Coardi (Wednesday), or any day this week after that, I'm easy.
Notes: OPEN LIKE AN OPEN THING. I want your cr and I want your revenge, tag in under whatever scenario your dark heart desires.
→ new note: if you'd like to start a new thread please come up with a new setting on another day, Coardi has hit critical mass of things Mr Hermit BatCrab would put up with before vanishing back into the shadows. :E
Warnings: TBA. (Swearing? Not much else.)

Bruce doesn't want to admit it at first, but after he gets a decent night's sleep and has a real conversation with someone, he feels a lot better. It took him an hour of silent reflection on Hasi's little balcony to come to terms with having felt awful to begin with - it's not being here, it's everything else, being here is a strange misstep but it isn't enough to throw him, not really - and to accept that attempting to remain a ghost in the machine wasn't an acceptable plan of action. For a whole armful of reasons. Also on that balcony, struck by the view at night, with oddly-powered lights set into strange buildings like scattered candles and gems, Baedal reminded him of Baku, maybe Lahore, and the inoffensive memories chided at him from quiet corners about his aseptic behavior.

He still isn't social when he goes out. He's quiet, unassuming, and spends hours wandering, watching without truly interacting. He keeps to the edges of the river, then, walking alongside it off the roads, going under bridges where he can. There are people washing the dye out of great, bright reams of fabric in the still shallows, speaking a language he guesses must have once been of Earth; he practices with them for a time, talking of the river's current and temperament and the goddess that lives within instead of about the tenure of their citizenship.

He walks up into the city proper when he comes to the water's split, skirting the arena - there are men and women practicing familiar-but-not-quite movements in a great lined rectangle. It's an experience on a scale Bruce never had even during his own time as a student, and so he sits and watches for a while. A woman speaks to him about a guild that trains and dispatches warriors to serve as private guardians; he keeps the paper she gives him, but invests in nothing further. It isn't anything he'd truly consider, but he's curious in an academic way about what lies inside their doors.

There's a library he'd like to see, but a group of children with wildly varying ages (and genetic markers) end up kicking multicolored rocks into the cobblestone street - he kicks one back, artfully, and ends up engrossed for the next hour learning a game with rules he suspects are not actually written down anywhere. With few words, he teaches one of them how to hold his arm to balance anything on his hand, and laughs a little, privately.

Comments

[mirrorswillfall.livejournal.com]

By the river in the garment district, there are a number of really excellent wholesale clothmakers who, given the right incentives, will deal with individuals rather than factories and big fabric stores. Or what pass for factories and big fabric stores in Baedal. It didn't take long for Penelope to find out that the right incentive is, often enough, a pretty face belonging to a loyal customer. Which she very much is.

So on a nice day, after a train ride and a not unpleasant stroll, she takes a detour by the riverside before going to do some business. A nice not-at-all human-looking Xenian promised to give her a deal on a particularly gorgeous flowy silk-like fabric that he (she? it??) had been overproduced recently, and which Penelope had not inquired to the origins of. You have to choose your battles, when you're stuck in a weird alien melting-pot world, trying to get by. There's no room to worry about bio-friendliness when half your day is spent just trying not to unintentionally poison yourself on alien food your human stomach can't digest.

Thankfully, donuts in Baedal are still just donuts, so Penelope has a relaxing stroll along the river with a donut, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. It helps keep her mind off of whether or not Angus bothered to wait before she left the street before he took off for Ilde's house. Damn traitorous bastard cat. The absolute balls.

[caballero]

He stops short of actually asking for the whole story concerning this particular fabric's construction, but Bruce is briefly kidnapped to hold one end of a vibrant green-dyed skein over the harder currents. He cleans off after, but he suspects his nail beds are going to be that emerald color for a good while. It's all right.

Soaked up to his knees and carrying a leather bomber jacket (the one he had on when he arrived), Bruce spots Penelope when he's walking back up one grassy slope of the river's edge to where he left his shoes. He tilts his head when he sees her, considering; he doesn't say anything yet.

[mirrorswillfall.livejournal.com]

If anything could startle Penelope anymore, it wouldn't be a half-soaked good looking guy wandering out of the river. Not in this city. What's somewhat surprising is that he's staring at her like she's done something more remarkable than walk by holding a coffee and a donut. Maybe she has and she just doesn't remember? The thought stops her in her tracks.

"Oh god," she says, around half a mouthful of donut. "Did I sleep with you?" There's about a fifty/fifty chance of it having happened, it's worth it to ask.

[caballero]

The stages of reaction to that are, suddenly and obviously, uncharacteristically easy to read on his face. For half a heartbeat Bruce keeps looking at her with that reflective expression, as if he hasn't fully registered just yet what she's said. Puzzlement hits first - then something like being scandalized, and then incredulity. Bruce is not hugely expressive, no, but every so often he manages to get a little bit blindsided. Sometimes.

Well. It's Penelope, all right.

He opens his mouth, inhaling, ready to say something - side-eying her a little as he does. A host of potential responses flit through his head like the colorful face of a slot machine, and then the thought of yes it's her, no she doesn't remember me causes him to abandon whatever reply he'd settled on and veer in a new direction that could possibly be summed up as the bantering equivalent of pouring a forty out on the sidewalk for a fallen friend.

Deadpan: "You'd remember."

[mirrorswillfall.livejournal.com]

The long pause is something of a worry, and she narrows her eyes at him mildly while waiting for his reply. Something definitely went on in his brain just there, and if she were one of the more unscrupulous sort of magic people, she'd just love to listen in on whatever it was. But she is, unfortunately, far more scrupulous than most people of her acquaintance would give her credit for.

His actual answer is somehow incredibly reassuring. (Also correct: from the look of the guy, she is relatively certain she would.)

"Okay. You were giving me kind of a look, there." She waves her donut hand (and cigarette hand, incidentally) around vaguely for emphasis. "Having fun... wading?"

[caballero]

"Yes."

This is true. He did enjoy himself wading, so there.

(Her responses, while comfortingly herself, carries a lack of personal piss-taking that he finds slightly unsettling. It's better that she never went through the frustrating nightmare of that alien city; this shouldn't bother him at all.)

"You looked strikingly like someone I knew at home, for a moment. Sorry."

[serjeant]

Fighting in the arena isn't anything like what Seoraj is used to, but it keeps his hand in and his reflexes sharp - sharp and getting sharper, when he makes a point of punching above his weight, dealing mainly with opponents who can take a hammer-blow without it ending the bout. (Expressly for that reason; he's not here to dance, but he'd rather not kill a sparring partner by accident.) He worries about getting soft here, sometimes, about losing sight of- something. It's a strange life that he leads, halfway in and halfway out. Without his community, his context, his life and what he is. The stillness, much as it suits him, leaves him more restless than he'd have thought.

As he walks back out into the city - hammer in hand and a coat on loose over his thin shirt, tacky with sweat and some of his own blood - he watches the practise, too, letting it quiet his own thoughts as he slows to a stop by the other man observing them. Not close enough to be invading his space uninvited, but near enough that it could be said he was joining him in said observation.

[caballero]

It's difficult to ignore a six-foot-four medieval-looking warrior sporting a giant hammer and bits of his own blood, and so Bruce doesn't; he doesn't stare, either, just notes the fact that he's been joined.

And while ignoring is difficult, it's not impossible, so for a spell, Bruce forgets - absorbed as he is in watching what he's watching, when the tone of the routine shifts, he tilts his head, unconsciously drumming his hand against his bicep, arms crossed. (There's still that funny awareness to him, even then, taken in for a bit by his interest.)

The cadence is familiar in degrees, the orthodoxy alien. It's fascinating, and already being spun into his memory.

After a time, when the sounds of unified shouts and sandals sliding over stone have begun to dull, edging on the break-up of levels and other activities, Bruce looks over at his mysterious companion. It's a little odd; there's not a moment when he seems to stop paying attention to what's before them and start in on the other man. He just is, now, like some shadowed footnote.

[serjeant]

At proper examination, Seoraj is an odd blend of the modern (the coat, the boots) and the archaic (the kilt, the hammer - the hair could really go either way) but his manner is squarely the latter when he offers Bruce a hand to clasp at the wrist in greeting. "Seoraj," he says, friendly without being forward; he has an easy confidence, a curiosity about the world around him that doesn't leave room for there to be any hesitation.

Why not watch a fascinating display of a style he's never seen before, in a method he's never witnessed? Why not introduce himself to a stranger watching, too? Something interesting might happen next.

[caballero]

He isn't surprised by the friendly way he's approached there - Bruce isn't nearly so small-minded to find an incongruity between size and demeanor - but he wasn't really expecting it, all the same. His slowness to reciprocate doesn't read quite as hesitation, but more like it takes him a second to process and acknowledge what Seoraj just did as what it was.

When he does return the gesture, hands still a little bruised and grip firmer than one might expect from someone his size (...compared to Seoraj), he seems at ease, but no less guarded. A little curious. "Tom."

(It takes him a minute to pinpoint that it's the lack of mania in the other man's friendliness that's throwing him off.)

[serjeant]

Other people have found that incongruity - or simply not seen it, looked at him and read Arum warrior and made their own assumptions that he's handled as seemed best in each case (...sometimes this meant trolling, in other words) - but less, he finds, in Baedal than any other place he's been. And he's been around, at least in his own world. Seoraj thinks sometimes he's spent more of his life walking (marching) than anything else. Enough, at least, that he knows an educated eye when he sees one; Tom knows what he's looking at. That's interesting.

"Haven't seen the like of that before," he remarks when he lets go, indicating the dispersing crowd of practitioners. "It's a warrior's art, though, isn't it?" This may be the politest way someone has ever called Bruce out on his particular extracurriculars, but - and it's evident - that's not really what Seoraj is doing. 'Tom' seems to know more about this than he does, and he's genuinely curious. When you want to know something, you ask.

[modeststillness.livejournal.com]

After an interview and a few timed test runs, Thrice is soon to be on the payroll for a citywide bicycle courier service. He's been loaned a bike and told he has a week to learn as much of the city as he can before he's tested again. It's a good thing that he's a triathlete, because what this means is he's going to spend almost all that time either running or biking along as many city streets as he can.

Anyone with an eye for detail might notice that Thrice's preferred paths through the city don't really follow common logic; rather, they dodge and weave through traffic and obstructions in unexpected ways that allow him to maintain a steady speed. If there's a particularly tricky bit, he might even skid to a halt, heft his bike up, and skitter over a low fence or two. How curious.

[caballero]

It is curious, but not baffling; the curiosity is half what draws Bruce's attention, at first.

The other half is the fact that he has to do a bit of a fancy move to get out of the way and kick back the colored rock by the time Thrice wheels by - luckily he makes this all look easy, and so accidents are avoided and children are impressed at the same time.

Then he catches a look at the man coming by and it's -

- nothing, because that look is all it takes to know, no, that isn't anyone he's met before, even if there was a sick heart-stopping moment of wonder. Bruce isn't sure what that was, really. Panic? Anticipation? ... It doesn't matter.

[modeststillness.livejournal.com]

Aware that none of the children have been injured, Thrice doesn't slow or stop; rather, he just keeps going on his rounds of Baedal. For Bruce, the identity of the bike courier will remain a mystery for a little while longer.

...but not too much longer. After he'd finished doing a few more laps of the cantons that border the river and returned to the messenger depot for a shower, Thrice went off in search of a good cafe to sit, get a bit of food, and digest what he'd learned about his new city.

[caballero]

The moment happens, and then it's gone, and Bruce puts it behind him. It's hardly worth inspecting; that young man is no one he recognizes, and it's just another footnote in the strange surreality of Baedal. It makes him wonder about the creativity of the universe - maybe the material that goes into reality is limited; maybe it's like reshuffling a vast, star-made deck of cards over and over again. Maybe the infinite feeling is an illusion only because the equation is large enough that they're just not seeing the edges of it.

That evening, walking into a cafe whose sign is crafted brilliantly in a scrawling language he's never seen before, Bruce catches a glimpse of who's already sitting inside, and thinks about card games.

[modeststillness.livejournal.com]

Thrice might not know his way around card games on a cosmic level, but he's a veritable wizard on a smaller scale. If it wasn't for finding work as a courier, he might've ended up as a bookie or some other sort of odds man. Comfortable with probability, very little surprises him and when he spots Bruce he doesn't wave the man over but he does gesture in recognition.

The cafe is busy enough that should Bruce choose to ignore him and sit elsewhere it wouldn't be unusual.

[deadredbird.livejournal.com]

Eventually, Jason comes out of the library, face set in a sort of default irritation that eases somewhat when he pauses to watch the kids at play. He does register Bruce's presence, but his viewpoint at that moment offers little of Bruce's face, and what he can see, he doesn't recognize. In fact, he's just on the point of turning to go on his way when some flash of familiarity — something in one of his movements? Maybe the line of his silhouette? — makes him hesitate. It's not as obvious a doubletake as most people's would be, barely more than a flicker of the eyes, but it would be obvious to Jason, and possibly to whoever This Guy is, so Jason takes refuge in looking at the tall clocktower in the distance, then pretending to fiddle with his watch to synchronize the time (which he did earlier).

Immediately, it feels contrived and frankly stupid. It's not Bruce, and even if it were, why should he care? But now he actually has to fix the time on his watch, so. Okay, this has been a really stupid, awkward moment. He'll just. Fix the time. And not look at This Guy. Suddenly he's irritated all over again, possibly comically so: some random leather jacket wearing, kind of suspiciously built dude frowning at his watch and totally not paying attention to anything or anyone near him. Right up until one of the kids accidentally sends a colored rock at him, and he catches it reflexively. Thoroughly embarrassed, he gently tosses it back (probably violating some kind of rule of the game, but he doesn't know any better), all while resolutely not looking at Bruce. This has been weird enough.

[caballero]

Of course he notices, and of course it puts him on edge; every reason on the list of why is a given. But he doesn't react, doesn't even turn his head - it is vital he doesn't appear to have the capacity to pick up on anyone staring at him. It could be easy as mistaken identity - he imagines it happens to everyone, constantly, wholly innocently, in a city like this. 'Everyone' is not Bruce Wayne, though.

When Jason sends the rock back, Bruce looks at him plainly - and there's no spark of recognition. He doesn't even need to fake the lack of it. Bruce has never known Jason, any Jason, and hasn't ever known anyone with his face, either. His expression is curious, but in a genuinely harmless way, aimed at a guy who caught a child's toy and sent it back over without a fuss.

Maybe he'd have said hello (well, no, he wouldn't have, but there's a space, a beat in silent tethered interaction, where it seemed like he might have, if he were secretly normal), but then a child-shaped missile launches against his knees with a squeal of "HEY MISTER!" and Bruce nearly topples over.

for you, Kay.

[deadredbird.livejournal.com]

It is exactly what he wanted and needed and if he were more suspicious, if he were willing to think about it more critically, paranoia might blossom. But he isn't, and he's not, and the relief is instant. The guy staggers and a normal person might make some kind of aborted reactionary gesture of 'oh gosh' or 'ha ha it looks like you need help', but not Jason, who simply flees — not at any kind of noticeably fast pace, it is a totally natural walking away speed, but it was just way too smooth, very decisive and directed. Bruce stumbles, Jason leaves, refusing to analyze the sudden lack of the tension he hadn't been able to understand in the first place. His shoulders even out just visibly. Things are okay again. Not that they hadn't been okay in the first place. Everything is fine. Everything has been fine. Nothing happened. He's going to go buy a hot dog or something.

bananas

[caballero]

It's nothing at all like seeing the bicycle rider earlier who looked like Richard for a moment - whatever recognition this other man was looking for, it was dissipated with Bruce acting unlike himself.

That is a problem.

The little girl, who has solid pale blue eyes and skin that looks metallic and copper, dark at her soft joints, reveals in clumsy degrees of hilarious subterfuge that she is an advance agent for her older brother, who wants Tom's CiD number. Through no small amount of handflailing for having revealed this cunning plan too soon - You seem really good with kids, are you from Earth, what cohort are you on - and steps laced with gentle-handed flattery that only looks like shyness (curiosity), rock-kick games and clock towers fade into the previous hours of the day as easy as the sun sets.

(Bruce won't forget his face.)

[pushfall.livejournal.com]

Still trying to absorb and learn as much as she can without making it overly obvious, when Claire isn't working, she's taken to strolling through Baedal only a little more than the next person typically might. It's an aimless sort of wandering: no destination in mind and no set path really kept to, she keeps the city's map bookmarked on her CiD so that she doesn't accidentally end up somewhere she's better off not being. Not that Claire would care if she found herself neck deep in something strange, but she assumes it might be hard to keep her head down, so to speak, if she somehow becomes known as the girl who just wanders into Bonetown or Chnum out of curiosity.

But she is curious, and for as much as she's explored there is still plenty she hasn't seen. This place is so different from the places that she's been before that she's happy to come and go when she has the time. Today, she's grabbed a sandwich from a vendor and has been steadily working it down to nothing over the course of the last fifteen or so minutes, minutes spent watching the end of Bruce's strange game for lack of anything better to do and a genuine interest - and confusion, really - in how the game is played. By the time the game is over, she's left with a small, flaky pastry and a couple hungry birds hanging around in the interest of crumbs.

It's not until she's up and getting ready to continue on her way that she notices what the older man is teaching one of the kids and consequently hangs around a moment longer until it's more than painfully obvious that she's been watching this whole time. It's cool, though, and sort of nice to see someone older indulging little kids.

[caballero]

That stranger (Jason) and the mathematician (not Richard) have come and gone, and by then - combined with Penelope, on top of it all - Bruce has become plenty mystified by the luck he's having today. Not hostile, not even stressed, just sort of incredulous. A little while after the game disperses (and he's been accosted for his number, which he finds thrillingly mundane and thus completely unusual), he decides he's going to do something different this time, and just... goes over to her.

The hair's wrong and there's a distinct lack of eyeliner, but hell he's curious. His body language is nonthreatening and he seems casual, easygoing. He stops a good yard and a half from her, head tilted, slightly unsure but apparently not fussed about it.

"Claire?"

[pushfall.livejournal.com]

There is a brief moment during his approach in which Claire considers either turning and walking away or turning and looking behind her, because just no way that he's coming for her when she doesn't even know him, and although she hasn't been totally inconspicuous in watching him, it's not exactly as if a girl who barely breaks five feet and has a pastry that will collapse like a pile of scattered leaves as her only weapon comes off as the least bit threatening. She doesn't turn, though, and doesn't walk away, though her body makes the intimation of going 180 degrees enough that her torso turns and then snaps slowly back at the sound of her name in a voice she doesn't recognize.

She narrows her eyes - not unpleasantly and definitely not with the same degree of menace that would be highlighted and exaggerated by gunmetal gray shadow and an overabundance of black liner - but there's a suspicion and paranoia there that Claire can't cover up by trying to look like she's just confused to find someone like him talking to her, let alone using her name. She's never going to get used to this game of people knowing her face without her knowing them first, not in any way that she believes won't end up with her back on a table and the top of her head torn off. Claire can't even approach it from a casual position and consider the fact that someone that good looking knows who she is and is talking to her.

It's weird, he almost looks like -

Claire shakes her head to snap out of it and switches the bag her pastry is in from one hand to the other. She considers him a moment before responding, looking up into his face as if trying to place him, although she knows she doesn't know him. "Have we met before?" she asks, the sort of answer that might as well be a confirmation to his inflection.

[caballero]

It's weirder than Penelope, that's for sure. But there'd always been such an intense hardness about that woman - he doesn't think she'd accept anything less than him just rocking up and asking her. (Bruce still isn't sure if he and Claire ever got along, really, but they worked well enough together, and he didn't dislike her.)

This is... different. He's not sure what to make of it. Or her.

He shrugs, and there's something politely apologetic in the movement. "Apparently not."

For a moment it seems like that might be all, then - "I've been on the other side of that exchange a couple times since I showed up. Sorry. It was uncanny, for a second."

[pushfall.livejournal.com]

She's halfway to stepping after him and has already brought her arm up to catch his shirtsleeve with the tips of her fingers before he's even turned to move away. What he says takes her aback if only because she's not expecting anything else from him at all. So that she doesn't look completely stupid, Claire crosses one arm over her stomach and wraps her fingers around the opposite elbow, guarded but still trying to appear comfortable enough to lean all her weight to one side.

It takes a moment, half a beat, for her to do it, but eventually she offers him a small, understanding smile, and says, "I'm still getting used to it. I've never had anyone mistake me for anyone else, really. Mostly just people mistake me for myself." Which doesn't even make sense, but maybe he'll understand it regardless. Maybe he won't, so she goes on without giving him a chance to ask for clarification.

"But you got the name right. I'm Claire." And then there's another moment in which she's studying him, trying hard to determine whether or not she actually might know him from somewhere, someplace a long time ago. "How does that happen on coincidence?