batmanschmatman | 124 [voice/spam]

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124 [voice/spam]

[Warden Filter]

[Dick's gone back and forth on saying something public about this, because while he's still kind of freaking out about this and knows this isn't his Bruce, he still feels weird basically siding with the other wardens/the good of the Barge instead of him. This wasn't exactly the father/son reunion he was expecting. :c] That isn't the Bruce Wayne from our world. If he says anything to anyone that gives you reason to be concerned, I want to know about it immediately.

[This is legitimate, okay, he's already talking about staging an escape attempt. B(]

[Filtered to the DC Cast]

I need you to tell me everything he told you. [This is an order, not a suggestion. :|]

[Private to Dean]

...

[Private to Sara]

...

[He was going to message you both, but he really doesn't know what he wants to say, and there's a pressing issue he needs to deal with right now.]

[Spam for Tim]

[Dick isn't honestly sure how he's processing all of this. He's angry, he's frustrated, he feels like he's running on adrenaline but doesn't have anything to do with it, which means he's been pacing and kind of shaky the entire time he's been talking to Bruce. It's stupid, he knows it's stupid to get this worked up over the Barge throwing something like this at him, and really, with all the different realities out there, he probably should have been anticipating it. But that doesn't make it any easier to deal with, and it doesn't change the fact that he's seen what that kind of psychotic break does to someone like them, and he's never really actually... dealt with the fact that he'd been killed by someone with a pretty similar mindset.

At least this time, the crazy murderous Batman apparently wasn't planning on holding a gun on him any time soon.

Which is actually the more pressing issue he needs to deal with right now, so, message composed and posted, Dick tosses his comm down and head out of his room down the hallway and knocks at Tim's door impatiently.]

It's me.

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[By now she's kind of got her apartment looking less like a little whirlwind of rage and post-traumatic stress ripped through it, although it's still looking a lot more...cluttered than usual. On the upside, the flood's karma fairy restored her couch, so, net gain unless you count the exposed emotional scarring.

She's not that surprised by her visitor when she opens the door, though she is somewhat - glad, relieved, it's hard to articulate - to know that he's come at all.]

Hey, Dick.

[She steps back to let him in.]

No need to ask how you're doing, I take it?

[He'd meant what he'd said to Ariadne - he's still really not sure what he wants to say, if he even wants to say anything at all, and he sort of hesitates in the doorway for a moment before walking in and immediately going to hug her, letting his forehead drop to her shoulder.

Let's just say he's not really coping well. :v]

Probably not, no.

[She wraps her arms around him without hesitation, putting one hand into his hair and stroking it lightly.]

We don't have to talk about it.

I think I might need to. I feel like I'm going crazy. [He doesn't pull away though, and his throat's so tight he's honestly surprised he managed to say anything coherent.]

[She kisses the side of his head and reaches down to take his hand and squeeze it.]

We can do that too. The talking, I mean, you're not going crazy on my watch. You want to sit down?

[Dick manages a laugh and slowly pulls back from the hug, not letting go of her hand, though.] Sure. Nice of the Admiral to finally replace your couch.

[But that's all he's saying until he's sitting down and comfortable, and even then, he still feels kind of like he's going to be sick. This whole thing is a nightmare.] Did you talk to him?

[She wraps an arm around him in a neat mirror of their position yesterday, and it's really unsettling how fast the tides can change around here, isn't it? Even though a tiny, awful part of her is relieved that the fact of her being kidnapped and tortured for two months as a twelve-year-old is no longer the most immediately horrible thing going on.]

No. No, I - I don't have a goddamn clue what I'd say.

[Dick chuckles. It's strained and sort of painful, but.] I know the feeling.

[He snuggles closer, putting an arm around her, too, and takes a moment to enjoy being close to someone else, someone he trusts and cares about and isn't going to shove him away for needing to be vulnerable right now. It's nice, and it helps ground him a little when he starts trying to figure out what to say.

He hadn't told Babs, or Bruce or Steph after she'd come back to the Barge, or anyone, really. The only people who'd known about it were gone now - he'd told Jim right after it happened, Tim told Shego and he'd told Martha in the middle of what was probably an emotional breakdown - and there was a part of him that wanted to keep it that way. It was better, almost, that just he and Tim knew about it. It was easier to pretend like it hadn't happened because only they knew about it, and he really didn't want people treating either of them differently once they had the information.

After all, I'm going to grow up to be a mass murderer if my brother dies is kind of a crummy thing to have everyone know about you.

But this kind of felt like the Blake issue all over again. He'd needed to tell someone, so at least one person would understand why he was being so irrational and upset about it, and wouldn't say he was just being biased because of his Bruce or acting like Batman and not trying to look out for Tim, and so before he could take it back, he just said it.]

You remember how I told you about that other Barge, where everyone was crazy and evil? I might have left out some details.

I remember.

[She'd seriously considered packing in the whole Barge experiment prematurely because of it.]

...What happened?

I wasn't affected. But the me who was there was a lot like that dream? You remember, back when we were all dream sharing. [Which was weird, that she'd know what that other life was like despite him never really having lived through it himself or shown it to anyone else on the Barge, but. Stranger things have happened.]

Anyway, that's not really important. I was pretending to be him, to try and get information on how to get the Barge back to normal before things got worse. I snuck into the engine room to try and find a way to access the bridge, to see if there was something up there that could reverse the effect of whatever we ran into.

[He takes a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to say this.]

Tim was affected, and he found me. He was from a reality where I was killed trying to shield Bruce from an antimatter ray - it happened to me, too, you've seen the scar, and I know I almost died, but - [He cut himself off.] Tim lost a lot of people in a really short period of time that year, and I guess me dying pushed him over the edge. He became Batman and killed every single one of our villains, plus anyone else who got in his way. And when he found me in the engine room - [He had to stop again, his throat tight as memories of what had happened flooded back. He still had nightmares about it, the other Batman standing over him with a smoking gun telling him it was his fault that this had happened, and he had nightmares of his Tim intercepting the bullet meant for him and bleeding out in his arms, telling him it was okay, that this was supposed to happen (thanks, dream sharing incident).]

I tried to talk him down, but he shot me in the chest and I bled to death. It's the only time I've ever died here.

Tim was a mess afterward, I spent the better part of a week trying to convince him to eat, let alone pretend to be functional human being again, and I know it still haunts him, to have all those memories and see how easy it would be for everything to fall apart like that. And frankly I'm terrified of dying, now, because I can't let that happen to him. So having this Bruce here, who's basically exactly the same as that Tim was, is kind of horrifying.

Christ.

[It's hard to know what else to say to that, firstly because Sara is not a big talker when it comes to this sort of issue, but also because...just...fuck.

What she does want to say is that Tim's his own man and not a robot within whom an input of 'Dick's death' will necessarily cause an output of 'mass murderer', and even if he was, that's not his fault. But she doesn't say it, because she doubts very much that he'd hear it.

And really, what the hell does she know? She's always had Julie, but beyond that she's had to build her own family, over the years since her mom walked out. What would she do if she lost them all in one fell swoop, if she found herself completely alone?

Ha. Like she's ever alone. Not that the nature of her 'company' makes that a good thing.]

Do any of the others know about this?

[It's a good thing she doesn't, because Dick really doesn't believe that, and it's partially because he knows he'd snap and do some really awful things if Tim was killed in front of him, or, you know, period, and considering Sara had taken a couple shots at him during the flood apparently... seemed like it was better to just. Not talk about that right now.]

No. My old inmate did, and I told a couple friends right after it happened, but they've all left.

[And if they don't know now, they probably aren't going to find out - at least, not for a while. And she suspects she's only being told because after a while the pressure of keeping a secret becomes too much - you need someone to know, just so one person will understand that the decisions you're making actually arise from something and aren't just baseless paranoia.

She squeezes his hand.]

I'm guessing this is the question of the hour, but what can I do?

[Dick manages a sort of wry smile, squeezing her hand back gently.]

Can you boot him back home, turn back time and erase all our memories? [This is by no means a serious request, but man if you could do that, that would be awesome.]

[She smiles wanly.]

I don't think even my partner in crime trumps the Admiral, sorry. So I guess that just leaves keeping an ear and a shoulder reserved for you.

Thanks. [And he's going to be just sitting quietly appreciating that shoulder for a moment, because it kind of helps put a hold on the feeling that the floor's been pulled out from under him and he hasn't really caught his balance yet.]

This is such a nightmare.

I won't tell you I can imagine.

[She can't. It'd be a disaster if almost anyone she knew from home showed up here, but a murderous version of the man who'd raised her after losing -

Well. She'd learned Siry basically was that version, he'd just done a good job of hiding it. Never mind.]

[Dick doesn't say anything for a long time, maybe to the point of where it's not really a sure thing he has anything else to say.]

I need to keep him away from Tim. I'm not even sure if I can handle being in the same room with him after what happened, I don't need him fucking up Tim more than he already has.

[Part of her wants to ask if Tim's allowed an opinion on this, but - she knows that the part of you that knows your younger siblings are their own people qualified to make their own fuck-ups is usually not on speaking terms with the part that would flay the skin off anyone who tried to hurt them.

She can also guess that either Tim's going to keep away of his own accord, or he won't; if he doesn't then Dick'll try to make him and he'll succeed or (more likely) he won't, and they'll duke it out on their own time. There's nothing she can contribute that'll change that, and she figures that if Dick was here for advice he'd ask for it. Not that she'd have anything qualified to offer, given the broken mess of lies, death and absenteeism that constitutes her family.]

Dick, all I know is what you've told me but I think both of you are a lot more resilient then you're giving yourself credit for right now. You'll find a way through this.

[Dick, when upset, is sort of a strange person emotionally. Sometimes he feels like he wants to reach out and get cuddly or cry, and sometimes he doesn't want anything to do with people, and the stubborn, reactionary part of him flares up again for the moment and he sits up, looking at her seriously.

It's somewhere between angry and desperate, like he's trying to be angry that she's suggesting he's already giving up on the two of them, because usually he's the one who's desperately trying to hold things together, and it's frustrating when it feels like you can't have a moment of being miserable.] I know.

But this is important. You don't get how bad things were, when it happened, and how insane Bruce gets when things don't go his way. I have no idea what his reaction to Tim's going to be like when they actually get to know each other, and I'm not letting him screw us both up more than he already has. [Which maybe would have sounded almost affectionate and self depreciating before, had he been talking about Bruce, but now he just sounded bitter, and almost immediately, he felt guilty, and then mad at himself for feeling guilty.

There are a lot of feelings going on here.]

I didn't always used to be like this, you know. Closed off and grouchy and bitter? But it's the only way I've been able to cope with some of the stuff that's been thrown at us over the last couple months and being here is hard enough without things like this happening.

[She hadn't meant to be dismissive; it had been intended as less of a 'suck it up' and more of a 'it won't always be this bad', and if she cared for him a little less and got him a little less she might have taken offence and argued the point. But she knows there's a time when your opinion's wanted and when it isn't.

So for now, she doesn't talk. She puts her hand lightly on his back, between his shoulderblades, in a 'I'm not going anywhere and I'm still listening' gesture and doesn't say anything. Silence so far hasn't been the best indicator that he's done talking, and she expects that he'll give her a hint when he's done.]

[He briefly went tense under her hand, like he had almost considered flinching away from the contact, but forced himself to relax and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, taking a deep breath and falling back on the breathing techniques Bruce had taught him when he was a kid to calm down, although thinking that sort of made it feel like a hysterical chuckle was going to force its way out of his throat.]

Sorry. [His voice was thick, and while he didn't think he was actually going to cry, he still felt a little like he was suffocating. He slowly lowered his hands and tried to recenter himself, not really sure what he wanted to do now.] God, I'm sorry. [He glanced over at her.] Are you okay? I mean, I know we talked about the flood and everything, but-

[But he was suddenly feeling selfish for being upset and not thinking about what was going on with her. It wasn't exactly like the two incidents had left them with a lot of down time to process stuff.]

[She smiles weakly.] I'm okay. Not that I'm eager to do any of that again, but it's just history. It can't hurt me.

[It has, though. The pain of being dropped off at her dad's former precinct, having to practically crawl up the steps to fall into the arms of men who didn't find her, didn't save her, didn't help her - it's raw and fresh like it hasn't been since it happened. Afterwards she'd grown a thick shell over her anger and pain and called it recovery but it was still there, that fury, less and less these days but with a hard enough push -

But it's on her to be resilient. To take it. Because she's capable of more now than a twelve-year-old with a revolver ever was.]

[There was a part of him that really wanted to argue that point, that said history can totally hurt you, because it had done it so many damn times in the past and was doing it now, and he didn't really buy that things were totally fine with her right now. How could you be, after something you'd spent years trying to repress and get over and move on from was suddenly right back in your face as if it had happened days ago?

But he didn't want to push her on it, because one, he'd be a massive hypocrite if he did and two, he knew talking about it didn't always help. He just hoped she knew even if his life was apparently crashing down around him that he was still more than willing to talk about stuff if she needed it, because she'd always been there for him and he really couldn't articulate how much he appreciated that, and he was maybe a little in love with her for it. There were plenty of other reasons - and Dick was historically great at falling for people quickly, and way - but as probably pathetic as it was, he wasn't exactly used to people being supportive and affectionate when he was feeling sorry for himself, and he wanted her to know he was more than happy to return the favor.

So he just nods silently and slowly moves back over so they're more or less cuddling again, putting his arms around her waist and tried not to think too hard about Bruce or the other Barge.]

Thanks for being here, Sara.

[She wraps her arms around him and kisses the top of his head. Even if she's not talking about it - which won't help, can't help, in the same way an autopsy won't make its subject any less dead - she can take strength from him being here just as he can her. Having someone she can lean on like this, it means she doesn't have be so damned defensive all the time, she can just take a shot at being a regular person.]

You're welcome, Dick.

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124 [voice/spam]

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