multiversallogs | by the time you hear this i will have already spiralled up

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by the time you hear this i will have already spiralled up

Who: ~~Bruce Wayne~~ ~Tom~ and your character.
What: Daily life, some mundane, some not.
Where: Various places about the city.
When: Presently, though days vary.
Notes: This is kind of a pseudo-narrative whose primary purpose is background noise for what Bruce has been up to, but I decided I also wanted CR, so I'm leaving it open. >_> I think the easiest places to run into him would be around town (he's usually in Bonetown, when he's visible) or at the Vault, though if you have an idea for a specific scene please ping me. I WANT ALL THE THINGS.
Warnings: Mentions of violence, sexuality, assault.

Work at the power plant is profitable, but not particularly stimulating; he's far more interested in the government contracts and the way the wind power mill plays a role around the powers that be. He drifts through halls that he has clearance for, trades wires and bits of metal and runs electricity through strange alien glass. At night he goes home with great books filled with half-lost languages that tell only scattered tales of the city's conception and ends up with more questions than answers - but the questions, at least, progress.

He takes yet another alias (merely Tom pretending, merely, merely..) and signs up with men with haunted and vicious eyes who beat each other half to death one night away, bare-knuckled, desperate - the clientele is half burn-out half ex-con, and on the sidewalks as dawn creeps in, they hold ice packs to their faces and tell him stories, grinning viciously and spitting blood. He doesn't look like it, but he takes notes.

The Vault is ... he say nice, when asked, sometimes interesting, and maybe it is - maybe it would be more, if he did anything there that he was supposed to. He pays the cover charge and watches his friend, sometimes he walks her (or one of the waitresses) home. The day after he knocks out a particularly aggressive patron, his cover gets comped. He starts signing himself into the red rooms the visit after. Somehow, it's easier than warming up to the girl with short ice-blue cropped hair and dark skin that flirts with his peripheral vision and pretends to pretend not to notice his attention.

At three in the morning in Gidd, he sits on a rooftop and watches members of the Militia beat a man into a coma, the both of them wholly helpless, he on his distant perch and that man soft-boned and innocent below. He doesn't make a decision that night - he already had - but he does make a schedule.

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Beneath the surface of the river, Ilde can usually expect not to be interrupted by anything outside of it; there are a lot of reasons why she spends so much time down there, but this is indeed a compelling one, all things considered. There are always exceptions to a rule, however, and she darts sideways when the stranger hits the water to avoid a collision - it's an unceremonious thing not helped by the unpleasant taste his presence in the water leaves in his mouth. Literally, not figuratively; she's not sure what that is, but she doesn't like it.

He might've tried climbing out on his own, if it weren't for the fact that Ilde has him by the throat when she surfaces to see where the hell that came from.

He'd been waiting for this one; being cased back and forth out of the Vault, certain more cautious criminals eying him and assuming wealth from how he walks and how he flits around in VIP areas as if he belongs there. Bruce looks like a pretty decent mark who'd yield an excellent profit.

Alas.

The bridge is deserted, poorly-lit, moreso than the streets; the second they're secluded the man strikes, and then with barely any effort, finds himself sailing head first into the river. Bruce himself waits, forearms rested on the railing, watching the dark water. He doesn't think the drop was far enough or the water shallow enough to kill him, but hopefully he didn't pass out -

- oh. Well that's not what he expected. He raises his eyebrows.

Hi there.

Catching sight of Bruce watching from the bridge, Ilde's eyebrow goes up with visible recognition; she remembers him. From the Vault - the Ctenophora, talking to Hasi, friendly with her. Could mean friend or client, there, and she makes no immediate assumptions either way, given that she's slightly more preoccupied with the man who'd really, really like her to release his windpipe.

"If people keep throwing their trash into my territory," she says, terribly levelly, something about the prim upper-class diction slightly incongruous with everything else right now, "I'm going to start returning the favour. Do you want this back?"

Bruce, alternatively, recognizes Ilde from the network - hearing about her, too, but her look, here, is different from when he saw her (he sees everyone) at the club. Still, he knows it's the same woman.

"Not particularly," he says, mild, and observes the way his would-be assailant is choking. "He'd probably appreciate being put back on land, though."

It's not like he was trying to kill anyone - though Bruce doesn't seem to be in any hurry to rescue him from the water fairy.

After the second time he left someone hunched over and vomiting against a wall while the would-be mugging victim disappears into the distance, he spends as little walking around time in Bonetown as possible — sooner or later, he's going to punch someone with connections. Later would be better. It's where he eventually comes back, though, and it's just barely dawn when he stops for coffee at a tiny, cramped cafe where the barista scowls but not, he thinks, because anyone is pressing them for money. That's not always obvious, but they seem like a fairly small operation, and they don't seem unduly stressed. It's unlikely, in his opinion, that the Broad Arrow would have a stake.

There's a dog sitting out in front of the main window, happy to do absolutely nothing other than appear in need of a bath. Jason pats it on the head on the way in, buys their largest size, black, and fills it with sugar. He buys a couple newspapers too and sits at a table by the window to read.

Edited 2011-12-11 03:16 (UTC)

The first thing that Bruce thinks as he comes around the corner - angled for the coffee shop - is 'It's that guy from outside the library.' The first thing it looks like he thinks as he comes around the corner is 'It's that fucking dog.'

(Which he does think, just not at first. But he's not supposed to recognize this guy, so outwardly, he doesn't.)

For a moment, Bruce stops outside, and stares down at the familiar animal, somewhat puzzled. ... It's just a coincidence, right? It has to be. ... And then he decides he's not going to wait long enough to have that confirmed or denied, and heads into the store. (He considered leaving, after seeing Jason, but that would look suspicious. He's not even sure who the hell Jason is yet - or even his name - just that he's someone who recognized his own face, or thought he did. Who did he mistake him for?)

He's dressed unobtrusively, jeans and a solid-color flannel button-up under a winter coat left undone, with half an ID tag visible clipped onto his shirt pocket. So he's got a job somewhere boring and nine-to-five. The barista recognizes him, asks if he wants decaf or hot chocolate, and he just shrugs, not because he's indifferent but because she has better taste than he does and he doesn't quite care. He does pick a pastry, though, and quietly asks her how they're doing that week.

Ilde discards him a moment later with a sound of disgust from the back of her throat; whatever he saw beneath the water before she dragged him up is enough that he's scrambling for the bank rather than retribution and she folds her arms, circling in the water to keep watching the man above.

"I remember you."

Bruce watches the man go, unsurprised that he opts to just bolt away into the darkness versus attempt to re-engage either of them. Idly, he wonders if the woman in the water happened to see the details of him tossing buddy over there into the river. He hopes not, but supposes it might not matter, all things considered.

"From Hasi?"

"Yes." She rises a little further out of the water, in constant motion but not unfocused; she certainly must be paying attention not to miss what he's saying at this distance between them. "At the Ctenophora."

It's easy to pretend in the dark that he can't see her, so it's easy to just be casual - anyone would assume she's got a bathing suit on, that it's just the shadows that do that to her eyes and her teeth. His night vision is excellent, however, and he sees everything - reacts to nothing. Let her think it's ignorance.

"I have friends who work there."

Hasi, apparently, but he's speaking in plurals.

In Baedal - especially with someone she remembers from the Vault - she doesn't make any assumptions in either direction. Maybe he doesn't react because it doesn't bother him; she's tired of being treated as though existing is something she does expressly to disturb other people. As though she's inherently a provocation.

(Ignorance is more likely, even in Baedal, but-- it'd be nice not to be looked at that way, and there's no one around to care if she pretends.)

"That's why I was there." In the Ctenophora, specifically, and she means because she's got a friend there and not because she's inclined to creep on Bruce; she'd probably have investigated the Vault sooner or later either way, but Hasi's presence tipped it.

It doesn't bother him. She is what she is, and he's not been squeamish about bodies since the first time he had to stitch up a stranger. (Shouldn't he have lost those nerves with something more intimate? Oh well.) It's just easier to pretend otherwise; it's how most people are.

"I'm Tom." And he's still just standing there, casual, arms leaning on the railing like this is totally normal. "Sorry about the disturbance."

... With that dude being chucked into the river for some mysterious reason, and all.

There's a slight pause as she connects his face ('that guy who had his hands on Hasi') to his name ('the guy who I'm supposed to ask about golf') and if he's really observant he might even see the moment where she pauses, like, really?

"Golf is really competitive, huh."

Hasibe. Striking from the distance. Of course.

"It is."

Extremely seriously.

Ilde weighs this for some time, considering him while she swims in circles on her back, like this is just a normal part of her evening routine. (Maybe it is-- consider how she met Réjean.)

Finally, "At least it's not bloody polo. It's impossible not to look like a twat playing polo."

His smile is brief and a little unusual; not quite an afterthought, but something that goes against his default programming. He seems very mild, this one.

"I like horses," and agreement is in his voice, "But I've never gotten polo."

"I used to ride, at home." Her expression doesn't change, but there's a barely-there wistfulness in her voice; she misses it, permits herself to miss this one thing and doesn't allow herself anything like homesickness. There may not be a home to go back to any more, and pretending that she ever will is only going to hurt her. There are more interesting ways she can dig her nails into her own wounds than that.

"Have you done any riding here?"

He has, a bit. He's looking at horses; and there's no homesickness about that. Not his real home. (Seriously, imagine anyone riding around on a horse in Gotham ... and not getting hit in the face with a taser, Crane.)

It might occur to someone else to find this odd. Bruce neglects to.

"Not yet." There are certain pastimes she associates firmly with 'before' and not 'after'; things that it simply hasn't occurred to her to pursue now, because they're part of someone she's afraid she can't be any more. She's edged towards some of them, lately (Hasi is a walking reassurance that she isn't irreparably unrecognizable--), but not that. She remembers her first time on a horse, sat up in front of her father, her stepfather watching anxiously from nearby, how she hadn't understood what the smell or Emery's too-loud laugh meant or why Francois wasn't so sure it was a good idea.

(Nothing had gone wrong; it was years before she had to contextualize those details.)

"Have you?"

Someday he'll look back and wish that he wondered more about people - genuinely wondered. Versus just noting things. Not today.

"Yes." A duo of friends is walking across the bridge now, laughing together, and they nod hello as they pass; Bruce returns it. They either don't notice Ilde or don't think it's strange enough to remark on.

Back to the lady in the water: "It's a nice break from cars."

(A part of him is despairing without his Lamborghini, though.)

"I can't drive, anyway." She'd been sixteen when Prometheus got their hands on her, and had never needed to know how to drive; the independence aspect of it hadn't cemented as a temptation, not yet, not when she liked to sit in the passenger seat and watch the driver. She'd known so many people who did love to drive that it had felt like some kind of intimacy, like being included in something that made someone else happy, and she'd been spoiled enough not to have to see it any other way. "I like the cabs here better than the train, too."

Horse-drawn and not reliant on the CiD, not openly monitoring her travel habits; she can be charmed and paranoid at the same time if she wants.

The dog, for what it's worth, merely smiles up with tongue lolling at Bruce the same way it's been smiling at everyone else, and wags its tail. Perhaps, granted, a little more frantically than usual, but it doesn't even get up. Apparently it's waiting for something. That something (after Bruce has gone into the cafe) turns out to be the train, which it disappears into with considerate promptness.

On his end, Jason glances up from the paper, registers Bruce's presence the way anybody might, and looks back down. 'Giant snake corralled by twelve-year old in burlap sack.' Has he has gotten the wrong paper? No, it's just Baedal. That pastry looked good. Bruce would never wear flannel. Well, it is a solid color... ugh. Turning the page with a bit more force than necessary, he focuses on an article about the upcoming elections (unless he were undercover as someone with a 9-to-5) — okay, fine, he'll just. Close up his newspapers and go home.

... he'll buy a pastry first.

"Trains aren't so reliable." Especially high rail ones. He's been on one that crashed, it sucked.

(Ha, ha.)

"Horses are hard to keep, though." Even here. He still wants one. (Ponies.) Apartment living is not meant for them, though.

"We had the space, on the estate at home." She almost misses Florence more the longer she spends in Baedal, or at least in a different way to the way she'd missed it before; it doesn't feel so unreal or far away, now, and in some ways she wishes it did.

"Farmland is better than estates for that."

He sounds very sure of his assertion - but then, in Bruce's opinions, most wide open spaces are better than estate ones for just about any purpose beyond ultra-paranoid privacy and dedication to hermitism.

The barista is chiding with him about his drink - half coffee, half cocoa, and she's inflicting whipped cream and red and green sprinkles on him - she asks him if he hates Christmas; he says no, they just don't celebrate it where he's from, they all sit very quietly at home and think about making quilts.

(It's not quippy, it's soft-spoken and a little awkward, but it's still funny in a 'What the hell are you even talking about you weirdo' sort of way.)

He's keenly aware of the other man, though he doesn't seem like it; he barely seems to register him aside from the usual politeness of personal space in a public establishment. When he finally turns away, it necessitates passing Jason, and he meets his eyes for a moment, distantly polite as he tolerates his relentlessly festive drink. There's a flicker of - don't I know you? - but then it's gone, because no, he doesn't. He looks vaguely familiar because he stared at him once across a courtyard, but the memory isn't significant enough to have stuck with him.

The only reason he keeps fussing with the idea, Jason realizes as soon as he's closer to this guy, is because it's so damn unlikely. Which is sad and says so much about him. He doesn't need to analyze and note down all the ways in which this guy doesn't look like Bruce — it's obvious and therefore safe. How many times has he seen Bruce since...? Well, there was the one from that other earth. Then there was that one who didn't know him, in the City. Then Christmas. That's why he's doing this.

It lets him just about forget the whole thing by the time he's out the door. The pastry really is pretty good.

"I haven't spent a lot of time on farmland." After a moment, she reconsiders, then amends, "I haven't spent a lot of time on a farm that's...farming." There's a gesture here; the last time she was in a barn, she was watching someone be tortured for information.

"It's a lot of broad spaces." Good for being isolated; it's nice for riding. Even when it's not hospitable - he has memories of plateaus and rocky inclines, salt flats and stone-filled fields.

"Quiet."

Angela is a nice girl. Not a good girl, but a nice girl, and nice girls don't do the Vault. But then again, Angela does everything nice girls don't plus more so her being in the Vault again means that today is probably just whatever goes for Tuesday here. At least she stays out of That Room, the one that requires her signature for entrance. For the moment anyway. Curiosity will sooner or later get the best of her.

The bar gets most of Angela's attention as she waits to see if Hasi is working today, both to catch up and to see if Hasi wants to go out after she's done. With an easy smile and a charming word, she warms the bartender up into giving her the good rum with her cocktail. Let's see if the bartender charges her the bottom-shelf price.

"I like quiet." She had an unerring ability to find quiet in the loudest places; she didn't need much to be satisfied, most of the time. (Ilde described herself as easily pleased, which wasn't precisely accurate but close enough for government work.) "Places that have a purpose."

Something about that just inherently appeals; having reasons.

Jack isn't up at this hour on purpose, not lately. His party days may not be far behind him, but they are behind him, or at least swept under the run with the rest of his vices. He has morning meetings, places to be and things to do in far too few hours to be awake right now. Too bad that's not in the cards tonight.

If it's the Militia's rounds that wake him, it isn't until they're near finished, and he isn't thinking clearly enough to be aware of it, not consciously. He simply finds himself sitting up in bed, awake, alert, every nerve in his body on edge – and he tells himself it's nothing, because it's always nothing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, hold the breath in his lungs until it burns just to remind himself how to feel, and he's up. He checks the locks, then the windows, just– just because. He doesn't analyze it; he does it, and when that doesn't settle him, he grabs a bottle and a cigarette and heads to the terrace.

A squeaky hinge harbingers his arrival, followed by a quick flash of the match, then the slow glow of his cigarette as he takes a drag before stepping out away from the door. It's fucking freezing out here, by the way. (...Granted, it would help if he'd remembered to put on a shirt.)

"You should go out sometime." Why? Why not. It seems like something Tom might say. Bruce is inherently interested in Ilde because she's working with Hasi, in one way or another, but it's in a wholly different way to the social interest Tom might (should?) have.

"If you ever catch me out, remind me to give you some recommendations. I suspect I owe you for the surprise."

... Of hurling some guy on her, yes.

It's not curiosity that takes Bruce into the red rooms, but a desire to watch over others. He knows where the snuff films that circulate this city have come from; none are going to be made while he's there, walking up and down those halls. Let them think he's just some standoffish voyeur. (Maybe it's something like the truth.)

When he sees Angela, he's struck with something that's almost like guilt - maybe more regret - for how he behaved when they were out. Sometimes he's just not up to it.

He shoes up beside her at the bar, at first flicking his attention towards the bar tender who grins at him in hello; Tom doesn't say anything, just smiles a bit and then looks over at Angela. Hi?

Before Jack even opens the terrace door, Bruce knows he's there - he doesn't make a habit of trespassing, he's just on his way out, so of course the timing would work like this.

'Like this' meaning just as he lands silently in a crouch, balanced precariously on the roof's edge, currently neatly obscured in shadows but in very real danger of either having to immediately reveal himself or sit in a very dangerous position for as long as it takes Jack to go away.

- Of course that whole train of thought happens in a split second, and in that same split second, he decides that sounds like a terrible idea, and if he's going to get busted he wants to get busted without a leg cramp. So he just. Hops down onto the actual balcony. It's clear from how he moves that it's in the course of stalling himself from having leapt from somewhere alarming.

The guilt and regret is unnecessary. Angela just chalked it up to Bruce being shy and eccentric, a little more on the eccentric actually. He wasn't anything she couldn't handle of stand. This girl is experienced with crazy people, something that Bruce doesn't seem to be. Yet, anyway.

She doesn't notice his presence for a full minute as she chats up the bartender some more, knowing that the friendlier you are to some, the better drinks you get. When Angela does tear herself away from her current conversation to glance at her surroundings, she smiles at him and his inability to speak up. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Well," very reasonably, she seems to think, "do you have any recommendations for where 'out' I should go?"

Ilde has been busy in Baedal - extraordinarily - but she hasn't had a reason, yet, to go as far south as the farming communities. Her encounters with Baedal's horse population have mostly involved paying a cab-driver or watching them go by while she's walking, which isn't a bad thing, really; she's fond of public transport traffic on the ground.

In response to that, he seems to consider for a moment, then just - points. South.

... Out there, apparently.

That it doesn't bother her is odd, and it makes him feel two separate things; one is suspicion, because he doesn't know what Angela could want from him to attempt to put him at ease despite his poor behavior (anyone reasonable would at least be unimpressed with him), and relief, because if she's this blase about it, it means it'll be easier to disengage.

"Not today." Amiable. He tilts his head. He's just quiet, Angela. "Enjoying yourself?"

What the– It's lucky for both of them Jack isn't armed with anything more dangerous than a bottle of whiskey that he is really not inclined to waste, as his first instinct is defensive. He doesn't just jump, he jumps and steps back against the wall, taking the bottle by the neck and raising it up level with his head before he so much as pauses to think.

And then he does pause. And think. Which does not actually clarify much.

"How did you even--" He's looking to the roof, then to Bruce. Dude, what.

"I was aiming for the next one," he says, hands going up immediately in a 'cease fire' pose - his body language isn't threatening, nor is his voice, but, well. It's still weird. "Sorry."

... And wait, he was aiming for the next building? Sure, buddy. Bruce glances at Jack, his makeshift weapon, and back to Jack.

"Jack Benjamin?" (Surely it's comforting to know a constituent is a crazy person.)

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by the time you hear this i will have already spiralled up

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