Here we go. Here we fucking go. The magician trying to talk to the skeptic, that was a new one. Kirk laughed but the sound was more like a sob that bobbed out of his throat. Of course this was happening. In this shitty city he'd moved into for no good reason. He could've gone to school anywhere. He could've gone to school at Caltech. MIT. Anywhere else but Gotham. His heart pounded in his chest and for a slice of a second, his vision blacked out. When it cleaned he was staring down at the concrete. Like some tar and rocks laid down by a couple of big guys in hard hats would give him any answers.
"I’m not going to come any closer."
And then someone saying anything to him was too much. Trying to stand and actually make words come out of his mouth, it was too much. Hearing another person who was normal and expecting him to be normal and be able to carry on the conversation like an actual adult and not a blubbering child, it was enough to rip his breath from his chest.
He wasn't breathing. His heart went in his ears. Pound. Pound. Pound. When was the last time he'd touched another person? Pound. Pound. Pound. He found his breath again and inhaled deeply. And then, maybe because he hadn't been breathing for a hot five seconds, maybe because he was having a nervous breakdown, maybe because he was still a little drunk from the drinks he'd swigged down, but the tears started coming again. Kirk pressed his eyes against the fabic of the shirt on the crook of his arm.
He was a goddamn adult. And this, this one thing, it'd reduced him to a child in a parking lot. He bit the side of his mouth to hold back whatever noise his lungs wanted to make come out of him. Bit until he tasted blood.
"You can ask anyone who was at Verdant about what happened tonight. You can ask Oliver Queen himself and he’ll just confirm my story, and confirm what you know deep down. I know you don’t what to believe what happened to you, but you have to. I’m sorry."
Just the name Oliver Queen, what it did was make fresh wetness on his face. Wetness coming out of his eyes. Leaking into the fabric of his shirt.
"I-I-I"
His attempt to start the sentence was more like the opening of Crazy Train than anything else.
How apt. How fucking apt.
He swallowed but the lump didn't shrink. He swallowed, but all that happened was his throat was dry and cracked. Like he'd been drinking kitty litter.
"I um, I work for, I, work for Queen Industries and-"
The words, really, they didn't come out right. More like a scattering of half of an idea. He breathed in, held, breathed out. Something to release some chemical in his brain. Some online psuedoscience shit that someone had forwarded him when he still worked at S.T.A.R.
Asshole.
"I work-"
Breath.
"For um, Queen Industries, and I think-"
Breath.
His vision was unfogging.
"He's probably um, gonna uh, gonna, gonna fire me fffor this."
His entire factory for the stupid bat serum down the drain. The only good thing he had left in his shitty little life, circling down. Because one day it would run out and without the job he wouldn't be able to make anymore. Because maybe when he was man-bat, he'd be able to forget the fucking mess that was his life. The fucking mess that had been his face.
Christ.
"Look, I don't I'm science, I don't um, I don't believe in magic okay, so just, I've been stressed out lately and that, going up, on stage? It pushed me over, I teach summer school and the kids are mean and I thought um, I thought that it would mean something less that they were kids? But it doesn't they're just like me but short so just, please, just please leave, I have a cab."
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