batmanschmatman | 115 [voice]

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115 [voice]

[Warden Filter]

I just brought Poison Ivy down to Level Zero after she kidnapped, tortured and murdered Edward Blake, who's recovering in the infirmary. Steve knows what happened. [And you won't be getting any details on it, because it was pretty horrific and Dick really wants to just go sit in the shower for like, an hour.]

As long as T'Pol's in a coma, I'll be taking responsibility for Ivy from here on out, so if anyone has any questions about what happened or has an issue with her, I'd appreciate you directing them to me. She'll be down in Zero for the full week.

Again, I just want to stress with people that even with her abilities weakened, she's still extremely dangerous, and her pheromones still pack a punch. Use caution when approaching her, and don't let her have access to any toxic plants.

[Private to the Admiral]

I need a plant light, please.

[Private to Sara, about two hours later]

I don't know about you, but I could really use a break from being here right now, and I'm bringing a bottle of wine and a picnic blanket up to the CES, if you want to join me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Dick takes a sip of his wine and chuckles at the rib comment, shaking his head a little.]

No, I actually got out of it pretty unscathed, for once, which I figure is a good thing because I've been getting kind of tired of it hurting to breathe. [He considered the question for a moment and shrugged.] It was okay. Kind of more normal high school than my actual high school experience, which I guess is kind of depressing to admit to.

On the other hand, you're in good company. How many people here d'you think had a 'normal' time of it at high school? God knows the closest I got to an average adolescence was watching The Breakfast Club.

How many people here do you think had a normal anything? I can't think of a single person who just seems like a run of the mill person I'd run into at the grocery store.

Hey, I buy groceries.

[Beat.]

When I remember.

[Beat.]

...okay, granted, but even knowing what little I do about your home life, how many of your acquaintances at home were 'run of the mill people'?

[Dick considers the question for maybe thirty seconds, because the answer is really depressingly small.]

My old landlord. And my former police captain and partner on the force, so, three. And I kinda fell out of touch with them.

See? None of us would know what 'normal' was if it hit us in the face. That's why we can get a visit from whatever the hell the Admiral is and say yes instead of immediately getting ourselves committed. The most we can hope for is...I don't know what you'd call it. Benign weirdness.

What about you? How many normal people are you pals with?

[She takes a quick sip of wine and doesn't even need time for counting.]

Two.

[Her partner and her dead best friend's daughter. Yep. That's it.]

Well, normalcy's overrated anyway. [He's making a joke, but uh seriously Dick knows his "normal" life would be boring as fuck and he's happy with how things turned out.]

[Sara has a number of opinions on this subject but they're better off repressed, so she just smiles sidelong at him.]

Company's better this way.

Flatterer. [He smiles and takes another sip of his wine before glancing up at the sky, almost wary.] Nice night. I figured with the luck I've been having, it might have been stuck somewhere in the middle of a torrential rain storm.

You know if it starts raining now it's completely your fault.

[But there's no clouds and the air is silent and still. Apparently the Admiral doesn't have his all-seeing eye turned on them, at least not for the purposes of ruining a nice evening. She laughs under her breath.]

You know, it's crazy. Maybe normalcy's overrated, but I haven't had the time or space to do anything this...ordinary in years.

You've never found time? [He actually sounds surprised. He tried to make time to watch a movie with Tim or swing by the Manor to say hi to Alfred for a while and help him do the dishes or something, except when things got really, really hellish, and those moments might be rare sometimes, but they still happened.]

I mean, I'm the last person to talk about having free time and trying to make room for it, but everyone needs an hour off every once and a while.

Agreed, but...

[She lifts her right hand for a moment.]

It's been a while since I was able to exactly make my own schedule.

Kind of a demanding boss, huh? [He can't really imagine that. It had been bad enough with Bruce leading the way back when he was a kid, but having some kind of unreasonable force you didn't really know much about calling the shots seemed a lot worse.]

Don't - call it my boss.

[That comes out sounding a lot more serious than she intended and she moves on quickly, retrieving her lightness of tone.]

More like a demanding trouble magnet. And none of that trouble has a lot of respect for my 'me' time. Or my pathetic attempts to go on dates occasionally. That just....stopped happening.

[Her tone might have changed, but Dick still felt bad. He had a talent for saying the exact wrong thing in situations like this, and, well, that's sort of why he and Barbara never would have worked out.

One of the million reasons, anyway.]

Sorry.

[Well. As throwaway comments go, it's directly wired to some of her biggest fears, but she generally doesn't expect her friends to have read Care & Feeding Of Your Symbiotic Eldritch Horror.

She leans sideways, nudging her shoulder into his.]

Don't worry about it. If you can put up with even half my crazy supernatural baggage I can forgive the occasional bump in the road, you know?

[Dick lets out a short laugh and nudges her back, not pulling away as quickly as he probably could.]

Please, if I couldn't put up with some of that kind of thing, I'm pretty sure I would have lost my mind a long time ago.

[She hesitates very briefly, then just leans into him, resting her head on his shoulder.]

Score another one for abnormality.

[Dick doesn't hesitate in putting an arm around her, because, well. All this stuff had been kind of leaving him feeling ungrounded and lost, and he wasn't Bruce. He wanted people around when he was upset, even if he didn't want to talk about what exactly was going on.]

I guess so.

[She smiles and relaxes a little. At home this would be when the ground opened, but apparently she's safe here.]

So, is this technically our first date or -

[There's a roll of thunder in the distance, and when she looks over Dick's shoulder there's a bank of low black cloud rolling in from the direction of the entrance.]

Oh, come on.

[Dick had been about to answer, and while it might not be the ground opening up, that roll of thunder definitely... seemed basically like what he should have expected when he suggested heading up to the CES. And while there's a part of him that's almost amused, because this is just like home, he really wanted something to go right, for once.

So he laughs a little, sounding more tired than actually amused.]

Well, I guess this was kind of tempting fate.

If we get struck by lightning I'm blaming you. C'mon, we should go before it starts -

[The rain comes ahead of the clouds so it makes sense that it's near goddamn horizontal. She sighs heavily and starts to get to her feet.]

I'm just going to stop talking.

[Dick just laughs again.]

Probably a good idea.

[And don't judge him, but he is finishing off the last of the wine in his cup before standing up and picking up the picnic blanket and everything else they'd brought in. This is the kind of rain where it almost doesn't matter how fast you run, you're still going to look like you fell in a swimming pool after thirty seconds, and so while there's some urgency - because getting struck by lightning isn't high on his list of priorities today - he's not immediately sprinting for the door, either.]

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