Melon AU! Part 6
Part 5
While Alfred does what little he can to mend the creature's wounds, Bruce finds himself on the Batcomputer looking through their files on known species.
They've catalogued so much, both from the regular League and Justice League Dark.
Surely in all the combined experiences and knowledge of the vast network of heroes and civilizations that work together with the League there will be something on this creature and his species.
Nothing.
Bruce can't find anything like him in their files, he can't even really find anything close.
It's baffling.
“Our guest has no heartbeat, if that helps at all,” Alfred says casually, drawing up to Bruce's elbow. Bruce casts him a sharp and highly alarmed look.
“Excuse me?”
Alfred must have just finished his work, his sleeves rolled up and arms and hands freshly scrubbed of green.
“Yes, I was rather alarmed myself when I could find no pulse. With a stethoscope you can find a humming sound in his chest, however. I can only assume that's whatever he has instead - perhaps he simply has no heart. Different organs entirely.”
Bruce sure fucking hopes so. He inputs the added criteria despite being certain he's already covered every nook and cranny of the database he can.
Nothing. Still nothing that remotely resembles the creature in their medical bed.
Movement out of the corner of Bruce's eye brings his attention to Tim, who is approaching from the labs with tablet in hand and a frown on his face.
He'd taken a sample of the substance their guest bleeds to go analyze it while Alfred worked and Bruce searched.
“I'm going to take a wild guess and say you couldn't find anything,” Tim says. He only actually looks up from the tablet when he draws up next to Bruce, so he can't have developed that guess just from Bruce's expression.
If that's the case… “You couldn't identify the substance?” Bruce muses, because he hopes that's the possibility out of the two available to them Tim is going to confirm.
Tim's mouth thins into a line. Bruce closes his eyes for a moment.
“It's Lazarus water, isn't it.”
“I mean,” Tim hedges. “Yeah. But like. No?”
Bruce frowns. “Explain.”
“It's definitely the same thing,” Tim says, “but in the same way that like…filtered bottled water and scummy pond water are both water. Whatever shadow noodle bleeds, it's clean. I didn't know Lazarus water was dirty, but this stuff is so different. Seriously it's like if someone broke Lazarus water down into a few key elements and all the rest was actually just pollutants or something.”
Bruce blinks, sitting back in his chair slowly.
That's…he doesn't know what that is, to be honest. It's something.
“He is a Pit Demon after all, then,” Damian says from a short distance away.
Cass lays a gentle hand on his head. “Not a demon. Don't be mean.”
Damian ducks the hand and flushes a little. “I am not being mean. We have confirmation that he bleeds some form of Lazarus water, and we have no record of his kind. It is the closest approximation we have as of yet.”
Alfred hums thoughtfully. “The boy seemed surprised by Miss Cassandra's willingness to listen and talk to him, no?”
“Very,” Bruce confirms.
Alfred nods. “Your logic is sound, Master Damian,” he concedes. “And I understand that it is in logic your choice of words are found. But the aforementioned behavior would suggest to me that our guest is quite used to similar rhetoric from mouths that do not use the term so neutrally.
“We want him to see this as a safe place when he wakes. It would be best to avoid such loaded terms as ‘demon’, I believe.”
Damian blinks, nodding slowly. “I see. Very well.”
Thank God for Alfred, Bruce thinks.
“So now it's just a waiting game, huh?” Dick asks, striding up behind Bruce's chair and frowning at the screen. “Wait for him to wake up and see what happens? What he can tell us?”
Bruce hums, recognizing the false calm in his oldest's voice.
What Dick really means is that he wants to know exactly who did this to a living creature, and where he can find them. Any other information is secondary to that anger in him right now.
Bruce sighs and stands from the computer, turning towards the still, dark figure in the displaced medical bed.
They're all trying to keep a little bit of distance and stay relatively quiet so as to let the creature rest and not spook him. There are already too many of them in the Cave as is for Bruce's liking - this is still an unknown, after all - so Bruce has messaged Jason and Duke and asked that they stay out of the Cave unless absolutely necessary for now.
Jason was not pleased considering the potential - confirmed, now - connection to the Lazarus Pits.
That's exactly why Bruce doesn't want him here yet, though. He fears there might be some kind of reaction, and he at least wants to know more about their guest before that happens.
He at least wants their guest to fully understand they're not a threat to him first.
Bruce looks the creature over as he approaches the bed quietly. He's still incredibly still, chest motionless with the absence of breath.
Alfred has wrapped his newly stitched chest, the bandages seeming blindingly white against the impossible darkness of his skin.
It's with a heavy heart and a sick stomach that Bruce sees the hints of green staining the clean cloth in a distinctive Y.
Perhaps him not breathing is a good thing. At least a consistent rise and fall of the chest won't cause constant pain from shifting the incision.
Still, it unnerves Bruce.
No heartbeat, either? Bruce doesn't dare lower his head to the poor creature's chest to try to listen for the humming Alfred mentioned, but he does reach down for one of those spindly wrists as if Alfred could ever be wrong about a pulse.
Bruce presses his fingers to the inside of the creature's wrist, frowning when he can't find anything.
Like this, no breathing, no heartbeat, the creature looks for all the world like he's dead.
Bruce wraps his hand around the wrist as if getting a better grip will change the result.
The creature's eyes snap open immediately, rooting him in place with a wave of that strange projected emotion Bruce had noticed on the rooftop.
Paralyzing fear.
Then he opens his mouth and nearly blows Bruce's eardrums out with an unholy, nightmarish shriek on par with Black Canary.
Masterpost