A square room, with no windows, a table and a chair, reminiscent of those interrogation rooms on the detective pictures. He slumped down in it and stared at the fluorescent lights. Dressed to the nines, by far, in an unbuttoned collared shirt and an old bomber jacket and his hair rumpled and weariness settling into his eye-sockets, knees bumping together, one leg jiggling here and there. Exhausted – beyond it. A strong need to find them. He felt their pain and how it seared him, constantly and constantly, and he swallowed against the rivulets of sensation, digging the nubs of his bitten fingers into the underside of one wrist. I’m coming, he promised them, though he knew not if they could hear him. I’m coming. I’m going to find you.
He’d been looking for years and there hadn’t been a trace. Fucking – he started to shake, and all the hardness faded out of him, into whimpering softness. What had he gotten himself into? In the middle of the dregs of Gotham, in a nondescript warehouse meeting room, waiting on a person who had no face, who had no name but a moniker ( Lance wasn’t so stupid as to not recognise an alias when he heard it ) for information that may or may not be pertinent to him. It drove him bonkers, having to rely on uncertainties and the tumultuous knowledge of what he did and did not know. He hated it. It was these sorts of things which drove him to hide out in his old flat and pretend as if his thoughts were doing something for him, rather than realising that his lack of action was dooming them all. ( Them all: the Crane children, unfortunate enough to be born into that kind of family. Or adopted, like he had been. But he couldn’t escape it. He was still tied to Jonathan Crane, even if it was not by blood. )
Lance rose from the chair and circuited the room at least four times. The hem of his jeans was pulled underneath the soles of his old shoes, and he felt like one of those kids again, siphoned to the sidelines on the playground and watching the action, never partaking. Dissociation: he now looked down at himself, the emotional and errant part of him, and the logical one, floating somewhere far off in the distance, shook his head. Keep yourself fucking together. What was that even supposed to mean? Names and faces and information and Gotham. He hated all of it. And no matter how far he ran, he always came back to it. Always.
The door swung open. A man entered with a hat on, one of those knit beanies. He gestured to the chair, then sat in it himself, and turned in one of those freeing spins to straddle the back of it. He looked no older than Lance, perhaps by a couple of years at most, and there was that – that addled brightness in his gaze, the likes which he had seen a thousand times before. He’d been touched by someone Lance knew – and Lance’s heart throbbed a little faster.
“Hey there, hotshot,” came the smooth greeting. “Glad to see you decided to show up. You won’t regret this, I’m sure of it. Here – I’ve got some stuff for you. No one followed us, so you know. We’re all good, we’re all good.”
Lance opened his mouth, about to apologise and say, yes, well, I already regret it, and then take his leave of the place completely, but the man – the boy, really – produced folders from his trench coat like one of those smalltime hustlers, and a box, and he became distracted with all of the possibilities, with all of the paths about to open up to him. Windows and doors and this and that. His hand went to his arm; it slipped beneath the sleeve, it touched the glove, it touched the cold of the metal. He shivered at the reminder that he’d been crippled by this place in more areas than one. Remind yourself. Remind yourself. The stupid thing settled him.
He swallowed and stopped pacing, stepped forward. “– Alright. I’m listening.”
“Do you know who I work for? I work for the Riddler. And he can get anything you want. Including this information about your long-lost dear almost-departed siblings.”
Lance’s heart throbbed quicker; almost-departed. His emotions threatened to take their toll on him, and he sighed to cover up the metal schwick his fingers made then he clenched them all together. “– You told me you had information for me here. Not through another construct.”
“I do, I do! That’s why I brought the folder!”
Lance crossed the area beside the table and swiped it up, and the metal clinking, this time, was detected. The guy flicked his eyes to the covered arm, then up to Lance’s face. “I think you’ve got a lot you can offer Gotham, kid. If you just let yourself sort of – give in.”
“Gotham has nothing to offer me,” he replied softly, flipping open the folder. He stared hard at the grainy pictures, then looked back up with an arched brow. “I’ve already seen these.”
“Too bad for you then. That’s all I got.”
“Seriously. You mob people know how to play the games, but I’m not doing it.”
Call him stupid, call him courageous, call him straddling the line, but he shivered out a shaking breath and fixed the lips of his bomber jacket, zipping them shut.
“Now just wait a minute –”
“Waste of time,” Lance said, although not to the guy, but to himself. “Waste of fucking space. Who even are you anyway?”
“The Riddler isn’t part of the mob, my man,” he said, gleaming a smile. “He’s above it. I’m telling you, he can get what you want.”
The last thing he wanted to do was be seduced. But the back of his head buzzed even louder, and he had to cling to his glove to ground himself. He grimaced.
“You have exactly two minutes.”
A wrapping of darkness around the shoulders; a measured intake of air until his breathing slowed to nothing. Odd, how natural it was to fall into silence; strange, how habits of old could seep to the present. A reminder of what he once held, and what could never return. Awful --- deranged --- unforgivable. All applied to what happened to him; all defined the horror of being forgotten.
( here, the mirage of a damaged body, shoved to the side, left to the maggots and dogs and cruelty of human nature. he bled and bled and bled, all for nothing, all for everything.
here, a choice that rang in his ears, a girl’s wide-eyed stare shifting between fear and defiance. he had that fire, once, but felt the burn for someone else rather than for himself.
here, a rebirth of a boy who cast his gaze to the sky and no longer saw a bat’s wings. he was fine with the loss, for who would want a man in a costume who couldn’t avenge when needed? what use was a man who couldn’t kill when innocent lives were lost over and over and over again? )
((( here, a question: why wasn’t i enough for you? )))
Jason shifted his weight, a silent movement despite the materials of his jeans and jacket rubbing against one another. He still had enough moments to himself, to review his plan ---- despite the high likelihood of him taking artistic pleasure. Discovering information, devising a strategic plan, it all never satisfied the urge to charge forward, but it was certainly necessary. And in the grand scheme of completing his own personal missions ( because there were no clients whose goals didn’t align with his, oh no siree ), he couldn’t complain about doing what was necessary.
For a moment, he debated forgoing the suppressor. After all, some things needed a spectacular entrance, and perhaps the Riddler might as well know he was being hunted by a different type of monster. But surprise was necessary, and of anything, right here, right now, he would do what he needed to do.
{{ Punch once, punch twice, punch harder, faster, there isn’t enough blood ---
A hand at his shoulder, squeezing tight, wrenching him off his back. The air leaves his lungs and does not return, and for a moment, the world tilts on his axis.
And then the hard-earned instinct to survive the world of Gotham launches him forward, and in the next moment, he’s snarling in Bruce’s face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“This is not what we do,” Bruce growls in the guttural voice that he believes passes as intimidating. "We do not aim to kill --- ”
“Oh, so seriously maim and injure, and then blame circumstances if they die is your idea of a better option?”
Bruce’s eyes narrows. Jason’s lips curl in defiance.
“He won’t die, but you know he deserves it. Why else would you be out here? Why else would you agree to have robins beside bats unless they all had the same goal? You can fool everyone else, you can fool yourself even, but you can’t fool me. ” }}
( life’s lessons were an absolute bitch )
Taking a breath, Jason worked his jaw underneath the mechanical mask, pressing a finger to his temple to view the path of guards. Sometimes, the sudden whir of technology, the intensity of the sudden change of his vision because of sensors, it stole his breath. Disorientation, dissociation ---- someone could slap a label, and they could probably be correct because hey, torture sure fucked someone up forever, but what use was it to Jason? He still fucking breathed, so he wouldn’t be fucking stopped.
Waiting for one breath, then two, his eyes followed a guard passing by his hiding place. Slowly, he unearthed from the shadows, the glint of light hitting his pistol creating a beautiful sight. And then, the pressure of the guard’s head against his pistol.
Jason smiled beneath the mask. “Bye bye, motherfucker,” he crooned.
One, two, down they all fell. A shot here, a knife at the throat there, at some point he ran out of bullets and threw the pistol, catching it in midair as it bounced off a guard’s head and smoothly placing the new chamber within. All the while, his smile grew, and if Bruce or Dick were present, they wouldn’t recognize the man that was enacting the execution.
When he slammed the last guard’s head against the wall again and again and again, he discarded the suppressor, throwing to the side with a loud clank. It echoed down the hallway, the sound louder than the shouts that stirred when he darted between bodies. Another breath, a stirring of rage, and his foot connected with the door, his gun pointed at the face he had seared into mind for weeks.
“Time to die motherfucker!!!”
