miss maggie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bossymarmalade) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thejusticelounge2014-03-25 03:50 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-03-25 03:50 pm
rage against the machine
Bruce approaches Clark as he exits the showers, his own shirt drenched in sweat. He brings a forearm up to wipe at his brow, stopping barely a foot away from the other man. His voice is firm, leaving very little room for the other man to argue when he speaks. “We need to talk.”
Clark treads the darkened patch of earth where once trees stood, ashy remnants of bark coating his boots with fine gray powder. He touches the scorched trunk of an elm, hand lingering there as if he’s trying to siphon something from it, before Bruce’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “Yes, I suppose so,” he says as he turns to face him. He looks him over once. “How are you feeling now?”
Bruce waves a hand. “Fine,” he states, almost irritated with the man’s inquiry, as if it were the last thing on his mind. He tilts his head a bit, eyes narrowing as he looks at Clark. “How are /you/ feeling, Clark?” Bruce, after a beat, clarifies: “Hallucinations, memory lapses, waking up from fugue states?”
Clark echoes, “Fine,” in a less terse tone, but just as noncommittal. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks around the clearing. “No. I haven’t lost it, Bruce, if that’s what you want to know. At least, I don’t think I have,” he adds, any defensiveness in his tone ebbing away.
Bruce gestures with a hand at the scorched forest around them. “And this?”
Clark closes his eyes as his chin falls toward his chest. “I know. I know. He called me Kal-El. He started talking about her.” He looks up again, into the sky, sunlight warming the cerulean undertones in his eyes. “I didn’t remember it before Kyle asked, but I was on Krypton before I woke up in the pool.”
Bruce’s eyes narrow more, his arms folding over his chest, and he tempers the the amber tones of alarm in his voice as he repeats back: “You were on Krypton?”
Clark nods hesitantly. “I don’t know how, but that’s what I recall. Flying over the Morstil Ocean.” His gaze cuts to Bruce, sharp and wondering. “Where were you?”
Bruce states blankly: “I don’t remember.” He looks to Clark, staring at him, his expression level and calm. “I’ve been trying to remember, but I’m coming up with absolutely nothing.” He moves, looking down at the ground as he moves towards the scorched forest, and then back. He brings his arm up, setting his elbow on the forearm of the other, wrapped around his chest. “It’s not bits and pieces, it’s absolutely blank.” Glancing back towards the camp, Bruce murmurs. “We need to strategize. Diana—” He stops, his Adam’s apple cutting a sharp line across the profile of his throat. He looks back at Clark, sharply. “You, Oliver and I.”
Clark has nothing to say to Bruce’s lack of recollection (it’s so unlike Bruce, and it disturbs him more than it would have coming from anyone else), so he shifts his attention to the camp too. It looks so vulnerable to him now, the little bungalows and longhouse all waiting to be overwhelmed by shadow or flame— something insidious, either way, something that’s weakening them one-by-one. “I thought about taking a group to scout the places we can’t reach in just a day-trip. But with recent events, I feel like we can’t leave anyone here alone.”
Bruce shakes his head, once, sharply, his eyes cutting across the distance to look at the other man. He doesn’t speak on the idea—no point in cutting down anything anyone has to suggest, let alone Clark.. not just yet—but turns his focus onto something else. “Zatanna isn’t doing well.” He states it. He does not ask.
Clark quickly objects, “She extinguished the fire. She called the rain, you heard her.” But one large hand rips through his hair in a clear display of strain, of fighting himself against his own claims. “She’s scared, Bruce. She’s scared like everyone else is, and she wants to go home. Have you found out anything?” There’s more hope in his voice than when he asks it of anyone else; Bruce is always logical, Bruce always makes the connections between little pieces until they lead to a whole. “The kids have been finding things. Shoes, mirrors, prisms.”
Bruce looks to Clark, sharply. “What?”
Clark sweeps his hand out to indicate the camp. “Did they tell you about the attack the other day? I was knocked unconscious, but they told me Mia drove the— things,” he touches the fading bruises around his ear, “that attacked us away with a prism that was left on her bedside table.”
Bruce brings one large hand to his face, scrubbing at it roughly: his fingers leave streaks, white with pressure, as he half attacks his countenance. He makes a low aggravated noise. “I need to see all of the things they’ve found.” He grits his teeth. “We aren’t prepared,” Bruce states, bringing the dark blue of his gaze to the Kryptonian’s face. “At this point, we have no plan of attack, defense.. People are disappearing.”
Clark meets Bruce’s eyes, seeing in them their usual alertness, the customary sharpness that makes them so piercing. “We have no plan of attack, no,” he agrees, and he begins walking toward the camp to gather the discovered items and confer with Ollie as well. “We’ve had night watches set up, but frankly, I don’t know that anyone would have time to warn the rest of us if we were sleeping. The attack the other day came out of nowhere. Sunshine one minute, and darkness the next.”
Oliver is sitting on the porch of Bungalow 2, the medical bungalow and the one that him and Bruce slept in. And him and Kate, back when Bruce was sick. Just because Bruce has set it up as a clinic doesn’t mean Ollie wants to leave it. He munches on one of the thick-skinned green apples that Mar’i keeps harvesting and stocking the kitchen with. Despite yesterday’s incident, he’s found that he craves the sourness of them, the almost compressed flesh of their tart insides.
Bruce speaks as he walks, everything about him normal. His gait is it’s usual, too-fast step, shoulders curled a touch without the weight of the cape, the cowl draped across his back. He scans the camp as they walk, rattling off the things he knows. “Everything about this place is designed to throw the League off,” Bruce replies, voice clipped; he does not say ‘us’. “At the very least.. to create an unstable enough environment that would lead to the loss of mental faculties.” He stops short, looking towards the Bungalow where Dick and Damian, Cass and Steph have been sleeping. His eyes swoop around, to the Bungalow where Oliver sits, and he meets the archer’s eyes. He tilts his head, gesturing for him to come over.
Clark adds, “And our powers,” as they beckon to Ollie,”but I regained mine for a few seconds when I set the fire.”
Oliver gets up, the white patio chair creaking from the release of his weight, and hops off the low patio to trot over to the other two. Clark is looking thoughtful and slightly pained, Bruce is looking thoughtful and slightly pissed. He could laugh with how much he adores them both. Ollie clasps Clark’s arm with his free hand in passing and kisses the corner of Bruce’s mouth before taking another bite of his apple. “What’s up?” he inquires, sucking on the chunk of fruit and then chewing it.
Bruce looks to the blond man. “Are you losing your mind?”
Oliver grins brightly and knocks his skull with the apple. “Not much to lose!” he declares, but then realizes it wasn’t a joke and frowns. “What, is this the angle you’re gonna take, B? Who’s lost their mind or not? Because lemme tell ya, it’s fast becoming a question of subjectivity ‘round these heah parts.”
Clark scrubs at the side of his neck with his nails. “I don’t think anyone’s actually lost their minds. We’re being affected by external sources, clearly. But what if they’re centered in the camp itself? This is where we ended up, and this is where we stayed. Maybe we shouldn’t.”
Bruce’s gaze hardens a touch, listening to Clark. He feels the impulse bubble up, to take the man’s statement and dash it on the proverbial and fact-driven rocks, but he knows it’s his own irritation at the situation. He looks back to the Kryptonian, shaking his head. “Where else would we go?” He takes a breath. “It’s not even a question of convenience and having—” He pauses. “Having the children with us. It’s a matter of shelter. It’s a question of being prepared if something else attacks us.” He looks to Oliver. “We need to consolidate and organize before we keep sending individual members off with no actual motive besides getting killed.”
Oliver laughs, looking from one to the other. “Nobody’s leaving the camp, and nobody’s getting /killed/, jesus,” he huffs. “Look, we’ll figure it out as we go. We’re the motherfucking Justice League, right? I’m not worried.” He shrugs, finishing off the apple and tossing the core carelessly into one of the bushes next to a bungalow. “Organize away, if that’s what makes you feel like you’re more in control, but I don’t think it’ll do a whole heckuva lotta good. I think we have to take everything as it comes.”
Clark is accustomed to butting heads with Bruce, but Ollie’s seemingly flippant view gives him pause, head leaning toward his shoulder as he studies his expression, trying to glean something from it. “I know having the children here necessitates shelter,” he concedes as his eyes shift back toward Bruce, “but I’m worried that something in the camp itself is drawing these creatures to us. I don’t know where we’d go,” he admits, looking out to the lane that extends beyond the treeline. “but whatever source of help we need, we haven’t found it here. How are we going to organize a defense with half of our members injured or… otherwise unstable?”
Bruce also looks to Clark, his eyes drifting away from Oliver, his teeth setting to a fine edge; the muscles in his jaw bulge, flare. He folds his arms again, around his chest, fingers curling across the sharp edge of his elbows as he looks down at the dirt, feet spreading a bit. “The fault with that logic, Clark, is assuming that we have control over our environment.” His eyes sharpen a touch, as he looks around the camp, fingers tapping a rhythm against the rise of bone at the joint of his arm. “Why us?” He elaborates: “Not every member of the League is here,” he looks to the space that Clark and he have left, subconsciously, between them: Diana would be there. Should be there, her hands curled over her hipbones as she did her own unique brand of verbal gymnastics with them. “And beyond that, why here? A place that has almost.. almost everything we want, most definitely everything we need to survive.”
From behind the Bungalow they’re standing at, a soft song starts up, in a young boy’s gentle soprano. It’s a nonsensical song, and when Ramsey emerges from the Bungalow a few moments later, a crumpled paper in one hand and something dark in the other, he’s smiling up at the three men. “Papá,” he says to none of them in particular. “Mamá me dio un…” he struggles with the final word, foreign on his English-speaking tongue, and rubs his cheek as if to clear his mind. The action leaves a large smear of bright blood on the apple of his cheekbone. “…gift.” He holds out a clenched fist, the flesh around the elbow of the matching arm mutilated, skin and gore hanging off a particular patch like it’s been dug at for more than just a few moments.
Clark shakes his head insistently, this challenge stirring his farmer’s instinct to cultivate, to manipulate the land until it provides what is needed. “We can have control over the environment, whether or not someone dropped us here by design, but not if we’re being torn from within by something that’s—” The child’s emergence quells him, and he follows after Ollie as they take him inside to be treated, watching over his shoulder for the source of this apparent attack.
Bruce moves from where he is standing, straight for the Bungalow. His gait is heavy and strong; he takes the steps up the porch and into the house, ahead of Oliver. He moves straight for what he needs, gloves sliding onto his hands like a second-skin. He begins to lay supplies out on the flat, slightly warped metal tray he’d set out on the night stand. He is silent, save for the sound of his molars grinding, the noise sweet and gritty, the teeth creaking with the force Bruce sets on them. He fills a syringe carefully, carefully with a local anesthetic, setting it down on the tray, before he moves over to Oliver and the boy, taking a towel and setting it on Ramsey’s lap as he brings a bottle filled with saline solution over to irrigate the wound.
Oliver strokes Ramsey’s soft hair, trying to get through to him in his daze. “Que es?” he tries, haplessly, floundering. “Donde esta mama? Aqui?”
Bruce watches Ramsey carefully before he brings the local to the boy’s skin, gently slipping the needle in and injecting enough that when he begins to irrigate, and, subsequently, suture, the pain won’t be as sharp. Bruce kneels, in front of Ramsey and to the side of Oliver, lifting the towel under the boy’s arm, using the spray bottle to flush the wound. Bruce’s brow knits, instantly, and he murmurs softly: “Ramsey.. con qué lo hicistes?”
Clark quietly moves behind the boy to hold him steady if he jerks away from the injection, one hand wide and warm against his back.
Ramsey looks between all the men in the Bungalow with him, a little more focused now, eyebrows curling in confusion. “Mama gave me a gift. Mama gave me the machine. She’s been talking to you, it’s so unfair she was talking to you and not me, but I figured it out.” He smiles again, revealing a missing baby incisor that he’s lost since their stay at Cachement. No quarters under his pillow. Just things under his skin. He smiles and smiles. “Mama just had to wait. But now there are lots of machines,” he motions with his head down to his body, squirming under both Bruce and Ollie’s touch. “They’re just babies, niños, but this one was ready to come out, this one was the first.” He shakes his tightly-clenched fist. “The next one is in my neck, I can’t wait to see it, I bet Mama put it there while I was sleeping.” His free hand shifts into his pocket and pulls out a bloodied paring knife. He presses it against the space between his ear and jaw, where his artery runs fresh. “It’s right here, Papá. Mama gave it to me. Don’t you want to see it too? It’s almost ready.” He lets out a blood-curdling scream at the pain from the needle, squirming even more violently, the knife scratching against his skin. “STOP! STOP, YOU’LL HURT THEM!”
Oliver wraps his hand around Ramsey’s hand, knife and all, jamming his fingers between that already-blooded blade and his baby’s tender neck. “No, sweetie, manito, don’t do that, shhhhh, we’re just making it better, okay?” He doesn’t try to move the knife, not yet, there’s too much going on that Ramsey’s anxious about; Ollie just holds it and strokes Ramsey’s hair, his sweet milk-grass smelling hair. “I know you’re upset your mama’s gone away. But she’ll come to see you, I promise. I promise, baby, she will. She told me.”
Bruce drops the syringe and bottle, nimbly moving his hand up to grab the paring knife, pulling it from Ramsey’s grip, away from Oliver’s own unprotected hands. He holds it out, for Clark, and lowers his head to check the wound, to make sure there isn’t anything inside of it, already preparing himself for it. He speaks to Clark. “Check what he has in his hand.” Bruce’s words are low and calm, exuding a particular brand of confidence: he was awake and no longer feverish. Everything would be fine.
Ramsey looks up at his stepfather, eyes round with confusion and rage. “She GAVE them to me! You don’t tell me when she’s coming because she’s already come! I SAW her! She told me to go back to sleep! She GAVE them to ME!” He squirms harder. “You puked up the machines she gave you, but I’m not going to!”
Clark doesn’t react vocally to any of this at first, not wanting to agitate the child further, but once Bruce has safely secured the knife, he grips Ramsey by a shoulder and presses his fingers open— gentle, but firm against his resistance as he pries the little fingers loose. “It’s okay, Ramsey,” he says softly near his ear as the baby teeth collected in his fist clatter to the floor around them.
Oliver blinks, hand stilling at the back of Ramsey’s head. “Moppet,” he says, unsurely, because Kate — she’d said she’d /be/ coming to Ramsey, like she hadn’t done it yet. Had Ollie heard it wrong? Had he misinterpreted? Had all of it been in his head and he wasn’t seeing Kate at all and he really /was/ going — no, no. He shakes that thought far into the background and presses his lips together, remembering the feeling of needles and mud coming up his throat. Now’s not the time to try and figure out what the child saw or didn’t see.
Bruce works diligently, his hands nearly flying at a super-human speed as he cleans the wound—nothing there, there’s nothing in the boy’s wound—and ignores the clatter of the tiny teeth, bringing the curved needle through Ramsey’s skin effortlessly. “Ramsey,” Bruce intones, his voice warm and soft. It drops into a gentle cadence, almost rusty on his tongue, because his mouth fills with the taste of metal, raw and blinding. Bruce repeats, his voice honeyed, near-musical. “..Ramsey, que te dijo mama cuando te vino a visitar?”
Ramsey makes a pitiful cry as the needle enters his arm again, staring down at the teeth lying on the floor where Clark pried them from his fingers. “Those…aren’t the machine,” he mutters, a slick sheen of sweat covering his little forehead. “What are those?” he nearly cries, but his eyes are growing clearer and clearer each passing second. He leans in the space between Ollie and Bruce, his little shoulders heaving as he pants. His eyes close, eyelids dark and heavily veined, opening them back up when Bruce speaks, looking up at the taller man, trying to understand his words. “Mama…Mama…” he keeps repeating, voice shaking more and more with each repetition.
Oliver hisses, “Bruce, give it a rest! He can’t answer anything right now, look at him!” Ollie cradles Ramsey’s head, kissing the damp roundedness of his forehead and murmuring to him in nonsense words and ‘there there’s’ and deep humming, trying to get the child to calm down, trying to soothe these thoughts of the machine, whatever it is, from his fevered little mind. “Just take care of him, please, Bruce, honey. Kate’s trusting us to do that.”
Clark steps away and collects a glass of the powdery fruit punch, a room-temperature pitcher of it having been left in the bungalow alongside the medical supplies. He kneels in front of Ramsey as he provides him with the cup, taking one little hand in his— the hand that held the teeth, that he’d forced open only a minute prior— and rubs his thumb along its soft skin. “Here you go. I like the punch, don’t you? It tastes like strawberries and grapes.” He doesn’t engage him about the incident, but when he stands, he murmurs to Ollie, “I’m going to go look around his room and the area where we found him.”
Oliver nods his thanks at Clark, managing a tight smile up at him.
Bruce looks up at Oliver, sharply, his expression dropping clean of any emotion: feigned for Ramsey or otherwise. His hands remain gentle, his dark gaze swinging down to make sure that the stitches are neat and smooth: they take the shape of a crescent on the inside of the little boy’s arm, and for a moment, Bruce thinks on the scar above her lip, the way— He grits his teeth, willing the image away, and applies a topical antibiotic to the sutures, silently wrapping the boy’s forearm in bandages, making sure they are wide and secure. He cleans his cheek of blood, and gathers up the soiled gauze strips and cotton balls, neatly, leaving Ramsey looking as if it had never happened, save for the wound that will be a small souvenir of his time spent here. He rises when Clark brings over the punch, his stomach turning over at the scent of it.
Ramsey gulps the fruit punch hungrily, the warm acidic taste of the cheap mix making him cough, shaking the cup and spilling some on himself. He looks down, eyes watering, and tries to wipe it off his shirt—the one he came in—but the pain in his arm draws his attention for the first time and he makes a soft yelp, pulling it to his body like an injured wing. He shifts again, and the contents of his pocket spill out onto the floor beside the teeth. The old comic and the depressed button Batman gave him one night long ago, laying beside bloody-covered teeth on the old hardwood floor. He doesn’t even notice, too busy looking at the massive man unfolding beside him, much taller than he had realized. “Are you…a doctor?” he asks.
Oliver looks down at the floor, attention drawn by the movement and fall of the objects. It’s not more teeth and it’s not a new knife, so Ollie lets go of Ramsey for a second to scoop them up. The paper is soft and worn between his fingers, like Ramsey’s folded and scrunched and read and re-read it a million times, and the button… “One of yours, chinquapin?” he says to Bruce, quietly, holding it up out of Ramsey’s line of vision even though it belongs to the child.
Bruce shakes his head when Ramsey asks the question, his mouth opening to answer him—“No, I’m not, but my father—”—when he sees the button. For a moment, Bruce looks torn, between taking the small device back from Oliver and hiding it away, but there is also recognition on his face: it wasn’t his, not anymore. It had stopped being his the moment he’d pressed the small thing into the boy’s hand, back in Star City. Bruce shakes his head, once, standing near the rubbish bin, stripping the latex gloves from his hands with a bright snap of rubber. “No,” Bruce states, simply, dropping the bloodied gauze and recapping the needle tip as he cleans. He looks to Ramsey, then back to his supplies, padding back to the stockpile.
Clark halts at the door as Ollie retrieves the comic, something in the illustration catching his eye even from afar, and rejoins them to scan over it himself. “The machine,” he reads aloud, the phrase spoken in Ramsey’s lilting voice echoing in his head. He glances down at the boy, so small and innocent, before holding it up to the other two men. “Have you seen this before tonight?”
Oliver closes his eyes, for a moment, making a fist around the button in his palm. Clark comes and rustles the soft paper from his other hand, asking about the machine, and he opens them again, pulling Ramsey’s tiny frame onto his lap so he can cradle the child. “Never seen it before,” he says, kissing the little boy’s dark hair. He tries not to notice the way Ramsey smells like Kate, too, in an open and vulnerable warmth, notes of her unfurling out with his own scent. He gives the button back to Ramsey and tells him, softly, just in his ear and not for anybody else, “You might not see him, but believe me, sweetie, he’s helping us. He always is.”
Ramsey leans back against his stepfather’s chest, still panting softly. He watches Bruce deny the button, then Ollie’s fist clench over it, little Kate wheels trying to turn but breaking at the gears. His eyelids flutter down to his broken wing, then back up to the bloodied gauze going into the trash. “I’m sorry…” he begins, staring out the window. “I just want to be a good boy…”
Bruce swiftly states: “You are.”
Oliver strokes Ramsey’s hair, compulsively kissing and re-kissing with each pass of his hand. “The best of boys,” he agrees. “This is Bruce. He’s not a doctor, but your mama and me love him very, very much and he loves us. And that means he’ll take good care of you whenever you need it, moppet.”
Ramsey looks between them, blinking heavily. “Am I Goofus or Gallant? Which one should I be? I’m just nine, I don’t know,” he trails off the last syllable, lower lip moving slightly. “Hi, Bruce,” he answers after a beat, looking up at the taller man. “I’m Ramsey.”
"That’s right, you’re Ramsey. You’re not Goofus OR Gallant. See, you answered your own question! Smart just like your mama."
He moves towards Ramsey and Oliver, his steps silent. He’s still dressed in the dark slacks, the violet-gray scrubs, muted now from the amount of times Bruce has hand washed them. He pads to the boy, stopping in front of him, before he crouches, in front of Oliver, holding Kate’s boy in his lap like he’s younger than he is. Bruce’s posture remains straight, his spine erect and tall, and his gaze dark, burdened with intent. He listens to the archer speak, his expression unchanging, before he reaches for Oliver’s fist, taking the button from within his palm, and bringing it back to Ramsey’s hand. He doesn’t grip the little boy’s chin or jaw, doesn’t remain standing to force him to look at him: he sinks down, so he is more or less at Ramsey’s eye level. With how tall he is, even crouched, he comes to the boy’s eye level.
"You keep this with you." Bruce swallows, gritting his teeth for a moment—his jaw flares, once—and murmurs, his voice low, a bit raspy when it comes out: "..I put your drawing in my desk."
Oliver draws in a breath and bites gently at Ramsey’s hair. Clark eases toward the door to take the paper to the longhouse and examine it there beneath the stronger lighting of the kitchen. “Do you mind if I borrow this? I’ll return it soon,” he promises Ramsey with a wave before he disappears into the gathering evening.
Ramsey puffs harder as the button slips back into his hand, as if it’s light weight is weighing down his entire body. He looks up at his stepfather, listening to his words, looking back down at the man in front of him. He knows he’s seen him on TV somewhere, one of those nights he stayed up watching American tabloid television when his father and stepmother asked him not to—just to see a glimpse of his mother, didn’t even matter what those monsters said about her, just to see her face—but he can’t remember who exactly he is. But something in his head recognizes the height of the man, the way he towers over him, but the way he’s not terrifying even at such an altitude. The connection doesn’t even fit between the man in the water with his mama and the man standing before him now—he only sees the man who came after the rest of them. “Are you gonna save us?” he asks, finally.
Bruce wants to look to Oliver, because, alarmingly, no words come. It isn’t Dick, or Jason’s emotions Bruce is negotiating with, sating; Ramsey isn’t Tim, and he surely isn’t Damian, steadfast logic he must rationalize, placate. Bruce is, strangely enough, out of his realm with the young boy. Ramsey looks smaller, tucked against Oliver, his eyes not as focused as they once were, the light in them dimmed, and Bruce, besides himself with the sensation of sinking, doesn’t know how to meet this challenge through the morass of fear he wades through. And, for once, The Batman—met with surmounting this unknown battle that does not require his rage, his intellect, his particular brand of justice— is silent. He cannot help him here, with this fight. But, despite slipping away behind him, Bruce feels Clark’s hand, against his shoulder blades. Oliver’s phantom mouth curling against his cheek. And, ripped and unearthed, bones half-rattling, Bruce hears Thomas, the curving lilt of his tone, a perpetual lullaby poised on his lips, ready to whisk away each hurt, each pain. What would they say, these men? How would they meet the boy’s eyes and his question?
Bruce swallows, and rasps, after a moment too-long, shattering his self-imposed silence: “Yes.”
Oliver almost sighs, a looseness coursing warm through his muscles when Bruce answers Ramsey, /Bruce/ and not Batman. “There you go, poppet,” he tells the boy. “And now it’s time for you to get some sleep. You can stay here with me or you can go back with Lian and her dad and Mia and Mar’i, whatever you want.”
Ramsey looks at Bruce for a long time, eyelids growing heavier and heavier at that simple answer. It was all he needed. “I’ll help you,” he offers, before looking back up at Ollie, brown locks disheveling as he twists his head. “I should go sleep with sissy,” he mumbles, lips as heavy as his eyelids. “She hugs me like I’m Kiki, I’d feel bad if she was alone…”
Bruce looks to Oliver, his brow knitting a touch.
Oliver stands up with the bundle of child, Ramsey’s limbs going lax and heavy with each moment that sleep winds up through him. It takes him a moment to wrestle his emotions back under control, because Ramsey’s words — his desire to comfort his brand-new sister, in the absence of her beloved dog — it steals his breath, makes his mouth soft with the sudden want to be /home/. But the feeling is fleeting, and he moves over to kiss Bruce again, slowly and tenderly. “I’m so proud of you,” Ollie says, the fierceness in his voice sweeping away the lingering sweetness of the kiss. “I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go talk to Clark.” He gives Bruce one more kiss and then heads out to Bungalow and the family he has there, preparing himself to give them an abbreviated version of what happened.
Bruce inhales, nodding as Oliver kisses him, not releasing the breath. He continues to clean, setting the tools to be sterilized aside in a separate kidney bowl, rearranging the supplies, taking another quick count of what he has, what he might need to return to the Raven Terminal for. Bruce doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Oliver returns, not even fifteen minutes after having left, the now-sleeping Ramsey still in his arms. He exhales, heavily, his eyes on the child, before lifting to Oliver for explanation.
Oliver shrugs. “Clark said the paper can wait,” he explains, “and I just wanted Ram to fall asleep knowing Mia had him to snuggle up with. We’ll keep him here, with us, Bruce.” He kisses Ramsey’s head, his lips warming instantly with the familiarity of the motion, how many times he’s done it over the past hour. “Thank you for all of this.”
Bruce moves to the bed, pulling the covers down and arranging the pillows in a way that allows the boy to have his own pillow. He smoothes the sheets down, undoing the layers and watching as Oliver sets the boy down; Bruce gently unties Ramsey’s shoes, and slips them off. He sets them by the door out to the narrow corridor, arranging them neatly, and returns to assist Oliver in covering the boy up, the nightly chill returning, on the dot. When the covers are pulled up, Bruce catches Oliver’s eye and nods, to the hallway. He slips out of the room, heading towards the washroom, to wait for Oliver.
Oliver toes off his own shoes and leaves them in an untidy heap by the bed as Bruce neatly puts Ramsey’s sneakers by the door. In sleep the child looks even more like Kate; Ollie can see the high cheekbones under the baby fat, the precise sweep of the eyelashes. He leaves Ramsey then — it gets hard to look at him — and goes to join Bruce in the washroom. “My Bruce,” he says, but he doesn’t touch the other man, not yet. There’s something still brittle in the air and Ollie doesn’t want to blunder over it, shatter it, destroy anything unwittingly.
Bruce leans his hip against the sink, not sitting on the edge, because he would tip it, surely. One hand curls against the porcelain, knuckles white with tension, as another hand scrubs at his face, roughly, before he curls his hand over his mouth, rubbing his thumb against the inside crescent of his cheekbone.
Oliver reaches out to rub his fingers along Bruce’s, clenching the cold smoothness at the edge of the sink. “Are you doing okay? With … having told him.”
Bruce shakes his head, as that isn’t even on his mind. “Why—” His throat closes up a bit, before he swallows, clears it. “Who was talking to him, Oliver?” Bruce doesn’t believe, for a moment, that the woman Ramsey was referring to, was Kate.
"It wasn’t Kate." That comes out without a moment’s hesitation, because Ollie knows that, for truth, even if he’s sketchy on the rest of the answer. "I don’t know who or what it was. People are seeing things, hearing things. Maybe tomorrow when we look at that paper he had, it’ll tell us more."
Bruce looks to the other man, his gaze heavy. “Why did he say you vomited machines, Queen?”
Oliver purses his mouth. “Needles. I didn’t know he saw me, but I…” Ollie moves forward, then, bringing their chests together so he can prop his chin on Bruce’s shoulder, put his free hand around to the back of Bruce’s waist. He stares at his own reflection in the mirror when he confesses, “I’ve been seeing Kate. And I’ve been…blanking out, now and again, saying things. Never for long, but I don’t know I’m saying them. I was saying Lewis Carroll things to Kane and then I vomited up needles and mud, Bruce.” His reflection stares at him flatly.
Bruce moves both his hands to Oliver’s wrists, not allowing him to flee when he pulls back, stepping and turning them so Oliver isn’t staring into the mirror. He looks at Oliver, his teeth grit. “..and this wasn’t something you thought you should bring up, when I ask you if you’re losing your mind?”
Oliver twists his mouth, eyes narrowing. He looks down when he answers, at Bruce’s chest, the dip of the scrub neckline. “It’s not the first time I’ve had blankouts,” he mutters, petulantly. “And I didn’t lose my mind back then, and I was, what — Ramsey’s age — so I didn’t think this counted as me losing my mind, no. It seemed more like … stress. Or something.” It sounds like a pathetic reason when he says it out loud, and Ollie glares at Bruce for making him say it aloud in the first place.
Bruce repeats: “You vomited needles when you were Ramsey’s age.” He says it as if he knew the other half of the conversation already. Instinctively.
Oliver blinks back up at Bruce. “What? I — no, I …” He stops, spreads his hands out against Bruce’s wrists, not trying to break the hold Bruce has on his. “No. When I was Ramsey’s age I started blanking out all the time. After, y’know, after my parents died. There’s big holes in what I remember about when I was little. But…Bruce, I tried to /swallow/ needles. I didn’t remember that until right now.”
Bruce ‘s brow knits, his countenance storming over as he looks at the other man, releasing one of Ollie’s wrists, to push his hand over his hairline. He shoves the mass of hair back, leaning forward to kiss his forehead, pulling Oliver against his chest.
Oliver digs his fingers into Bruce’s back, swallowing over and over as if he can feel the needles he’d tried to get down lodged there in his throat. “I’m not crazy,” he tells the other man, hoarsely. “I’m seeing things and saying things but I’ve got one of the best grips on what this place is and how to live in it. You need to believe me on that one.”
Bruce doesn’t acknowledge, one way or another, what his own opinion on his sanity is. He isn’t the person to be making that judgment call, not like this and not when Oliver is telling him, point-blank, that he’s fine. He pulls back, nodding, as he presses his mouth against the corner of the other man’s own, less a kiss and more a way to feed his words straight into the archer’s lungs. “You’ll tell me the moment you.. don’t have that grip anymore.” It isn’t request from him.
After what they just saw, after everything that’s happened so far and that’s gonna happen, Ollie doesn’t have it in him to fight this request. “All right,” he says. “You’ll be the first to know. So if you need to, you can take … measures.” He laughs, a little wildly. “Stake through the heart, since we don’t have any silver bullets or shotguns.”
Bruce ducks his mouth, his hand sliding up to grip the wide, broad flare of Oliver’s jaw, his fingers tightening over the bone. He kisses him, part of it being that he wants to, the other.. the laughter. It does nothing to warm him, in fact, it sends a cold, hard dagger between his ribs, cracking in along his sternum. He wants to shut it up. Wants to swallow the rough edges of the noise and make it stop.
That’s enough to take away all and any desire that Ollie has to discuss this further, to discuss /anything/ more until they’ve had some fucking sleep and the sunshine wakes them up in the morning. “Okay,” he murmurs finally, all traces of laughter having subsided. He drags his fingertips down Bruce’s face. “Let’s go keep our little one company and close guard, you ‘n me.”
Bruce nods, pressing his hand to Oliver’s jaw once more, before he kisses his mouth, his chin. He drops his hand, pulling the other man from the bathroom and shutting the door behind them. He pushes Oliver ahead of him, towards the bedroom, as he goes to the front door of the bungalow. He closes it, before he retires to the same room, bending to unlace his boots and line them up next to Ramsey’s, Ollie’s own. Bruce tries to ignore, fails, and rearranges Oliver’s shoes, into a neat line.
Oliver laughs at that, and it’s a more golden timbre than the looping laugh in the bathroom, as Ollie changes into pyjama pants and a t-shirt and gets into bed. “Alfred taught you well,” he notes, then settles down flat on the mattress and turns towards Ramsey, who’s sleeping soundly. “Come lie down, then, when the room’s tidy enough.”
Bruce does his circuit of the room, and then, finally, settles down, in the clothes he had changed into after showering from chopping wood. He is on his side immediately, because there is no other way for him to lay down. He murmurs, quietly, to Oliver, his eyes drawn to Ramsey’s sleeping face. “If Dick’s still working the schedule he has been, he’ll be heading in to bed in three hours.. I’ll be up then, to take over.”
Oliver knows better than to argue. Might as well take away a Bat’s security blanket as soon as try to get one to not go on patrol, especially the daddy of ‘em all. Exercise in futility. “All right,” he says. “I’ll be here. Asleep, but here.” The minute he lets his head relax against the pillow, Ollie knows he’s gonna drift off fast and hard, so he murmurs, “You and me have things to talk about tomorrow, dearheart. If I can help get you the answers you’re looking for, I will.” He barely manages to get the last words out before he’s asleep.
Bruce reaches across Ramsey, carefully, and settles his hand against the lowest part of Oliver’s ribcage, and watches him, as he drifts off to sleep.
Clark treads the darkened patch of earth where once trees stood, ashy remnants of bark coating his boots with fine gray powder. He touches the scorched trunk of an elm, hand lingering there as if he’s trying to siphon something from it, before Bruce’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “Yes, I suppose so,” he says as he turns to face him. He looks him over once. “How are you feeling now?”
Bruce waves a hand. “Fine,” he states, almost irritated with the man’s inquiry, as if it were the last thing on his mind. He tilts his head a bit, eyes narrowing as he looks at Clark. “How are /you/ feeling, Clark?” Bruce, after a beat, clarifies: “Hallucinations, memory lapses, waking up from fugue states?”
Clark echoes, “Fine,” in a less terse tone, but just as noncommittal. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks around the clearing. “No. I haven’t lost it, Bruce, if that’s what you want to know. At least, I don’t think I have,” he adds, any defensiveness in his tone ebbing away.
Bruce gestures with a hand at the scorched forest around them. “And this?”
Clark closes his eyes as his chin falls toward his chest. “I know. I know. He called me Kal-El. He started talking about her.” He looks up again, into the sky, sunlight warming the cerulean undertones in his eyes. “I didn’t remember it before Kyle asked, but I was on Krypton before I woke up in the pool.”
Bruce’s eyes narrow more, his arms folding over his chest, and he tempers the the amber tones of alarm in his voice as he repeats back: “You were on Krypton?”
Clark nods hesitantly. “I don’t know how, but that’s what I recall. Flying over the Morstil Ocean.” His gaze cuts to Bruce, sharp and wondering. “Where were you?”
Bruce states blankly: “I don’t remember.” He looks to Clark, staring at him, his expression level and calm. “I’ve been trying to remember, but I’m coming up with absolutely nothing.” He moves, looking down at the ground as he moves towards the scorched forest, and then back. He brings his arm up, setting his elbow on the forearm of the other, wrapped around his chest. “It’s not bits and pieces, it’s absolutely blank.” Glancing back towards the camp, Bruce murmurs. “We need to strategize. Diana—” He stops, his Adam’s apple cutting a sharp line across the profile of his throat. He looks back at Clark, sharply. “You, Oliver and I.”
Clark has nothing to say to Bruce’s lack of recollection (it’s so unlike Bruce, and it disturbs him more than it would have coming from anyone else), so he shifts his attention to the camp too. It looks so vulnerable to him now, the little bungalows and longhouse all waiting to be overwhelmed by shadow or flame— something insidious, either way, something that’s weakening them one-by-one. “I thought about taking a group to scout the places we can’t reach in just a day-trip. But with recent events, I feel like we can’t leave anyone here alone.”
Bruce shakes his head, once, sharply, his eyes cutting across the distance to look at the other man. He doesn’t speak on the idea—no point in cutting down anything anyone has to suggest, let alone Clark.. not just yet—but turns his focus onto something else. “Zatanna isn’t doing well.” He states it. He does not ask.
Clark quickly objects, “She extinguished the fire. She called the rain, you heard her.” But one large hand rips through his hair in a clear display of strain, of fighting himself against his own claims. “She’s scared, Bruce. She’s scared like everyone else is, and she wants to go home. Have you found out anything?” There’s more hope in his voice than when he asks it of anyone else; Bruce is always logical, Bruce always makes the connections between little pieces until they lead to a whole. “The kids have been finding things. Shoes, mirrors, prisms.”
Bruce looks to Clark, sharply. “What?”
Clark sweeps his hand out to indicate the camp. “Did they tell you about the attack the other day? I was knocked unconscious, but they told me Mia drove the— things,” he touches the fading bruises around his ear, “that attacked us away with a prism that was left on her bedside table.”
Bruce brings one large hand to his face, scrubbing at it roughly: his fingers leave streaks, white with pressure, as he half attacks his countenance. He makes a low aggravated noise. “I need to see all of the things they’ve found.” He grits his teeth. “We aren’t prepared,” Bruce states, bringing the dark blue of his gaze to the Kryptonian’s face. “At this point, we have no plan of attack, defense.. People are disappearing.”
Clark meets Bruce’s eyes, seeing in them their usual alertness, the customary sharpness that makes them so piercing. “We have no plan of attack, no,” he agrees, and he begins walking toward the camp to gather the discovered items and confer with Ollie as well. “We’ve had night watches set up, but frankly, I don’t know that anyone would have time to warn the rest of us if we were sleeping. The attack the other day came out of nowhere. Sunshine one minute, and darkness the next.”
Oliver is sitting on the porch of Bungalow 2, the medical bungalow and the one that him and Bruce slept in. And him and Kate, back when Bruce was sick. Just because Bruce has set it up as a clinic doesn’t mean Ollie wants to leave it. He munches on one of the thick-skinned green apples that Mar’i keeps harvesting and stocking the kitchen with. Despite yesterday’s incident, he’s found that he craves the sourness of them, the almost compressed flesh of their tart insides.
Bruce speaks as he walks, everything about him normal. His gait is it’s usual, too-fast step, shoulders curled a touch without the weight of the cape, the cowl draped across his back. He scans the camp as they walk, rattling off the things he knows. “Everything about this place is designed to throw the League off,” Bruce replies, voice clipped; he does not say ‘us’. “At the very least.. to create an unstable enough environment that would lead to the loss of mental faculties.” He stops short, looking towards the Bungalow where Dick and Damian, Cass and Steph have been sleeping. His eyes swoop around, to the Bungalow where Oliver sits, and he meets the archer’s eyes. He tilts his head, gesturing for him to come over.
Clark adds, “And our powers,” as they beckon to Ollie,”but I regained mine for a few seconds when I set the fire.”
Oliver gets up, the white patio chair creaking from the release of his weight, and hops off the low patio to trot over to the other two. Clark is looking thoughtful and slightly pained, Bruce is looking thoughtful and slightly pissed. He could laugh with how much he adores them both. Ollie clasps Clark’s arm with his free hand in passing and kisses the corner of Bruce’s mouth before taking another bite of his apple. “What’s up?” he inquires, sucking on the chunk of fruit and then chewing it.
Bruce looks to the blond man. “Are you losing your mind?”
Oliver grins brightly and knocks his skull with the apple. “Not much to lose!” he declares, but then realizes it wasn’t a joke and frowns. “What, is this the angle you’re gonna take, B? Who’s lost their mind or not? Because lemme tell ya, it’s fast becoming a question of subjectivity ‘round these heah parts.”
Clark scrubs at the side of his neck with his nails. “I don’t think anyone’s actually lost their minds. We’re being affected by external sources, clearly. But what if they’re centered in the camp itself? This is where we ended up, and this is where we stayed. Maybe we shouldn’t.”
Bruce’s gaze hardens a touch, listening to Clark. He feels the impulse bubble up, to take the man’s statement and dash it on the proverbial and fact-driven rocks, but he knows it’s his own irritation at the situation. He looks back to the Kryptonian, shaking his head. “Where else would we go?” He takes a breath. “It’s not even a question of convenience and having—” He pauses. “Having the children with us. It’s a matter of shelter. It’s a question of being prepared if something else attacks us.” He looks to Oliver. “We need to consolidate and organize before we keep sending individual members off with no actual motive besides getting killed.”
Oliver laughs, looking from one to the other. “Nobody’s leaving the camp, and nobody’s getting /killed/, jesus,” he huffs. “Look, we’ll figure it out as we go. We’re the motherfucking Justice League, right? I’m not worried.” He shrugs, finishing off the apple and tossing the core carelessly into one of the bushes next to a bungalow. “Organize away, if that’s what makes you feel like you’re more in control, but I don’t think it’ll do a whole heckuva lotta good. I think we have to take everything as it comes.”
Clark is accustomed to butting heads with Bruce, but Ollie’s seemingly flippant view gives him pause, head leaning toward his shoulder as he studies his expression, trying to glean something from it. “I know having the children here necessitates shelter,” he concedes as his eyes shift back toward Bruce, “but I’m worried that something in the camp itself is drawing these creatures to us. I don’t know where we’d go,” he admits, looking out to the lane that extends beyond the treeline. “but whatever source of help we need, we haven’t found it here. How are we going to organize a defense with half of our members injured or… otherwise unstable?”
Bruce also looks to Clark, his eyes drifting away from Oliver, his teeth setting to a fine edge; the muscles in his jaw bulge, flare. He folds his arms again, around his chest, fingers curling across the sharp edge of his elbows as he looks down at the dirt, feet spreading a bit. “The fault with that logic, Clark, is assuming that we have control over our environment.” His eyes sharpen a touch, as he looks around the camp, fingers tapping a rhythm against the rise of bone at the joint of his arm. “Why us?” He elaborates: “Not every member of the League is here,” he looks to the space that Clark and he have left, subconsciously, between them: Diana would be there. Should be there, her hands curled over her hipbones as she did her own unique brand of verbal gymnastics with them. “And beyond that, why here? A place that has almost.. almost everything we want, most definitely everything we need to survive.”
From behind the Bungalow they’re standing at, a soft song starts up, in a young boy’s gentle soprano. It’s a nonsensical song, and when Ramsey emerges from the Bungalow a few moments later, a crumpled paper in one hand and something dark in the other, he’s smiling up at the three men. “Papá,” he says to none of them in particular. “Mamá me dio un…” he struggles with the final word, foreign on his English-speaking tongue, and rubs his cheek as if to clear his mind. The action leaves a large smear of bright blood on the apple of his cheekbone. “…gift.” He holds out a clenched fist, the flesh around the elbow of the matching arm mutilated, skin and gore hanging off a particular patch like it’s been dug at for more than just a few moments.
Clark shakes his head insistently, this challenge stirring his farmer’s instinct to cultivate, to manipulate the land until it provides what is needed. “We can have control over the environment, whether or not someone dropped us here by design, but not if we’re being torn from within by something that’s—” The child’s emergence quells him, and he follows after Ollie as they take him inside to be treated, watching over his shoulder for the source of this apparent attack.
Bruce moves from where he is standing, straight for the Bungalow. His gait is heavy and strong; he takes the steps up the porch and into the house, ahead of Oliver. He moves straight for what he needs, gloves sliding onto his hands like a second-skin. He begins to lay supplies out on the flat, slightly warped metal tray he’d set out on the night stand. He is silent, save for the sound of his molars grinding, the noise sweet and gritty, the teeth creaking with the force Bruce sets on them. He fills a syringe carefully, carefully with a local anesthetic, setting it down on the tray, before he moves over to Oliver and the boy, taking a towel and setting it on Ramsey’s lap as he brings a bottle filled with saline solution over to irrigate the wound.
Oliver strokes Ramsey’s soft hair, trying to get through to him in his daze. “Que es?” he tries, haplessly, floundering. “Donde esta mama? Aqui?”
Bruce watches Ramsey carefully before he brings the local to the boy’s skin, gently slipping the needle in and injecting enough that when he begins to irrigate, and, subsequently, suture, the pain won’t be as sharp. Bruce kneels, in front of Ramsey and to the side of Oliver, lifting the towel under the boy’s arm, using the spray bottle to flush the wound. Bruce’s brow knits, instantly, and he murmurs softly: “Ramsey.. con qué lo hicistes?”
Clark quietly moves behind the boy to hold him steady if he jerks away from the injection, one hand wide and warm against his back.
Ramsey looks between all the men in the Bungalow with him, a little more focused now, eyebrows curling in confusion. “Mama gave me a gift. Mama gave me the machine. She’s been talking to you, it’s so unfair she was talking to you and not me, but I figured it out.” He smiles again, revealing a missing baby incisor that he’s lost since their stay at Cachement. No quarters under his pillow. Just things under his skin. He smiles and smiles. “Mama just had to wait. But now there are lots of machines,” he motions with his head down to his body, squirming under both Bruce and Ollie’s touch. “They’re just babies, niños, but this one was ready to come out, this one was the first.” He shakes his tightly-clenched fist. “The next one is in my neck, I can’t wait to see it, I bet Mama put it there while I was sleeping.” His free hand shifts into his pocket and pulls out a bloodied paring knife. He presses it against the space between his ear and jaw, where his artery runs fresh. “It’s right here, Papá. Mama gave it to me. Don’t you want to see it too? It’s almost ready.” He lets out a blood-curdling scream at the pain from the needle, squirming even more violently, the knife scratching against his skin. “STOP! STOP, YOU’LL HURT THEM!”
Oliver wraps his hand around Ramsey’s hand, knife and all, jamming his fingers between that already-blooded blade and his baby’s tender neck. “No, sweetie, manito, don’t do that, shhhhh, we’re just making it better, okay?” He doesn’t try to move the knife, not yet, there’s too much going on that Ramsey’s anxious about; Ollie just holds it and strokes Ramsey’s hair, his sweet milk-grass smelling hair. “I know you’re upset your mama’s gone away. But she’ll come to see you, I promise. I promise, baby, she will. She told me.”
Bruce drops the syringe and bottle, nimbly moving his hand up to grab the paring knife, pulling it from Ramsey’s grip, away from Oliver’s own unprotected hands. He holds it out, for Clark, and lowers his head to check the wound, to make sure there isn’t anything inside of it, already preparing himself for it. He speaks to Clark. “Check what he has in his hand.” Bruce’s words are low and calm, exuding a particular brand of confidence: he was awake and no longer feverish. Everything would be fine.
Ramsey looks up at his stepfather, eyes round with confusion and rage. “She GAVE them to me! You don’t tell me when she’s coming because she’s already come! I SAW her! She told me to go back to sleep! She GAVE them to ME!” He squirms harder. “You puked up the machines she gave you, but I’m not going to!”
Clark doesn’t react vocally to any of this at first, not wanting to agitate the child further, but once Bruce has safely secured the knife, he grips Ramsey by a shoulder and presses his fingers open— gentle, but firm against his resistance as he pries the little fingers loose. “It’s okay, Ramsey,” he says softly near his ear as the baby teeth collected in his fist clatter to the floor around them.
Oliver blinks, hand stilling at the back of Ramsey’s head. “Moppet,” he says, unsurely, because Kate — she’d said she’d /be/ coming to Ramsey, like she hadn’t done it yet. Had Ollie heard it wrong? Had he misinterpreted? Had all of it been in his head and he wasn’t seeing Kate at all and he really /was/ going — no, no. He shakes that thought far into the background and presses his lips together, remembering the feeling of needles and mud coming up his throat. Now’s not the time to try and figure out what the child saw or didn’t see.
Bruce works diligently, his hands nearly flying at a super-human speed as he cleans the wound—nothing there, there’s nothing in the boy’s wound—and ignores the clatter of the tiny teeth, bringing the curved needle through Ramsey’s skin effortlessly. “Ramsey,” Bruce intones, his voice warm and soft. It drops into a gentle cadence, almost rusty on his tongue, because his mouth fills with the taste of metal, raw and blinding. Bruce repeats, his voice honeyed, near-musical. “..Ramsey, que te dijo mama cuando te vino a visitar?”
Ramsey makes a pitiful cry as the needle enters his arm again, staring down at the teeth lying on the floor where Clark pried them from his fingers. “Those…aren’t the machine,” he mutters, a slick sheen of sweat covering his little forehead. “What are those?” he nearly cries, but his eyes are growing clearer and clearer each passing second. He leans in the space between Ollie and Bruce, his little shoulders heaving as he pants. His eyes close, eyelids dark and heavily veined, opening them back up when Bruce speaks, looking up at the taller man, trying to understand his words. “Mama…Mama…” he keeps repeating, voice shaking more and more with each repetition.
Oliver hisses, “Bruce, give it a rest! He can’t answer anything right now, look at him!” Ollie cradles Ramsey’s head, kissing the damp roundedness of his forehead and murmuring to him in nonsense words and ‘there there’s’ and deep humming, trying to get the child to calm down, trying to soothe these thoughts of the machine, whatever it is, from his fevered little mind. “Just take care of him, please, Bruce, honey. Kate’s trusting us to do that.”
Clark steps away and collects a glass of the powdery fruit punch, a room-temperature pitcher of it having been left in the bungalow alongside the medical supplies. He kneels in front of Ramsey as he provides him with the cup, taking one little hand in his— the hand that held the teeth, that he’d forced open only a minute prior— and rubs his thumb along its soft skin. “Here you go. I like the punch, don’t you? It tastes like strawberries and grapes.” He doesn’t engage him about the incident, but when he stands, he murmurs to Ollie, “I’m going to go look around his room and the area where we found him.”
Oliver nods his thanks at Clark, managing a tight smile up at him.
Bruce looks up at Oliver, sharply, his expression dropping clean of any emotion: feigned for Ramsey or otherwise. His hands remain gentle, his dark gaze swinging down to make sure that the stitches are neat and smooth: they take the shape of a crescent on the inside of the little boy’s arm, and for a moment, Bruce thinks on the scar above her lip, the way— He grits his teeth, willing the image away, and applies a topical antibiotic to the sutures, silently wrapping the boy’s forearm in bandages, making sure they are wide and secure. He cleans his cheek of blood, and gathers up the soiled gauze strips and cotton balls, neatly, leaving Ramsey looking as if it had never happened, save for the wound that will be a small souvenir of his time spent here. He rises when Clark brings over the punch, his stomach turning over at the scent of it.
Ramsey gulps the fruit punch hungrily, the warm acidic taste of the cheap mix making him cough, shaking the cup and spilling some on himself. He looks down, eyes watering, and tries to wipe it off his shirt—the one he came in—but the pain in his arm draws his attention for the first time and he makes a soft yelp, pulling it to his body like an injured wing. He shifts again, and the contents of his pocket spill out onto the floor beside the teeth. The old comic and the depressed button Batman gave him one night long ago, laying beside bloody-covered teeth on the old hardwood floor. He doesn’t even notice, too busy looking at the massive man unfolding beside him, much taller than he had realized. “Are you…a doctor?” he asks.
Oliver looks down at the floor, attention drawn by the movement and fall of the objects. It’s not more teeth and it’s not a new knife, so Ollie lets go of Ramsey for a second to scoop them up. The paper is soft and worn between his fingers, like Ramsey’s folded and scrunched and read and re-read it a million times, and the button… “One of yours, chinquapin?” he says to Bruce, quietly, holding it up out of Ramsey’s line of vision even though it belongs to the child.
Bruce shakes his head when Ramsey asks the question, his mouth opening to answer him—“No, I’m not, but my father—”—when he sees the button. For a moment, Bruce looks torn, between taking the small device back from Oliver and hiding it away, but there is also recognition on his face: it wasn’t his, not anymore. It had stopped being his the moment he’d pressed the small thing into the boy’s hand, back in Star City. Bruce shakes his head, once, standing near the rubbish bin, stripping the latex gloves from his hands with a bright snap of rubber. “No,” Bruce states, simply, dropping the bloodied gauze and recapping the needle tip as he cleans. He looks to Ramsey, then back to his supplies, padding back to the stockpile.
Clark halts at the door as Ollie retrieves the comic, something in the illustration catching his eye even from afar, and rejoins them to scan over it himself. “The machine,” he reads aloud, the phrase spoken in Ramsey’s lilting voice echoing in his head. He glances down at the boy, so small and innocent, before holding it up to the other two men. “Have you seen this before tonight?”
Oliver closes his eyes, for a moment, making a fist around the button in his palm. Clark comes and rustles the soft paper from his other hand, asking about the machine, and he opens them again, pulling Ramsey’s tiny frame onto his lap so he can cradle the child. “Never seen it before,” he says, kissing the little boy’s dark hair. He tries not to notice the way Ramsey smells like Kate, too, in an open and vulnerable warmth, notes of her unfurling out with his own scent. He gives the button back to Ramsey and tells him, softly, just in his ear and not for anybody else, “You might not see him, but believe me, sweetie, he’s helping us. He always is.”
Ramsey leans back against his stepfather’s chest, still panting softly. He watches Bruce deny the button, then Ollie’s fist clench over it, little Kate wheels trying to turn but breaking at the gears. His eyelids flutter down to his broken wing, then back up to the bloodied gauze going into the trash. “I’m sorry…” he begins, staring out the window. “I just want to be a good boy…”
Bruce swiftly states: “You are.”
Oliver strokes Ramsey’s hair, compulsively kissing and re-kissing with each pass of his hand. “The best of boys,” he agrees. “This is Bruce. He’s not a doctor, but your mama and me love him very, very much and he loves us. And that means he’ll take good care of you whenever you need it, moppet.”
Ramsey looks between them, blinking heavily. “Am I Goofus or Gallant? Which one should I be? I’m just nine, I don’t know,” he trails off the last syllable, lower lip moving slightly. “Hi, Bruce,” he answers after a beat, looking up at the taller man. “I’m Ramsey.”
"That’s right, you’re Ramsey. You’re not Goofus OR Gallant. See, you answered your own question! Smart just like your mama."
He moves towards Ramsey and Oliver, his steps silent. He’s still dressed in the dark slacks, the violet-gray scrubs, muted now from the amount of times Bruce has hand washed them. He pads to the boy, stopping in front of him, before he crouches, in front of Oliver, holding Kate’s boy in his lap like he’s younger than he is. Bruce’s posture remains straight, his spine erect and tall, and his gaze dark, burdened with intent. He listens to the archer speak, his expression unchanging, before he reaches for Oliver’s fist, taking the button from within his palm, and bringing it back to Ramsey’s hand. He doesn’t grip the little boy’s chin or jaw, doesn’t remain standing to force him to look at him: he sinks down, so he is more or less at Ramsey’s eye level. With how tall he is, even crouched, he comes to the boy’s eye level.
"You keep this with you." Bruce swallows, gritting his teeth for a moment—his jaw flares, once—and murmurs, his voice low, a bit raspy when it comes out: "..I put your drawing in my desk."
Oliver draws in a breath and bites gently at Ramsey’s hair. Clark eases toward the door to take the paper to the longhouse and examine it there beneath the stronger lighting of the kitchen. “Do you mind if I borrow this? I’ll return it soon,” he promises Ramsey with a wave before he disappears into the gathering evening.
Ramsey puffs harder as the button slips back into his hand, as if it’s light weight is weighing down his entire body. He looks up at his stepfather, listening to his words, looking back down at the man in front of him. He knows he’s seen him on TV somewhere, one of those nights he stayed up watching American tabloid television when his father and stepmother asked him not to—just to see a glimpse of his mother, didn’t even matter what those monsters said about her, just to see her face—but he can’t remember who exactly he is. But something in his head recognizes the height of the man, the way he towers over him, but the way he’s not terrifying even at such an altitude. The connection doesn’t even fit between the man in the water with his mama and the man standing before him now—he only sees the man who came after the rest of them. “Are you gonna save us?” he asks, finally.
Bruce wants to look to Oliver, because, alarmingly, no words come. It isn’t Dick, or Jason’s emotions Bruce is negotiating with, sating; Ramsey isn’t Tim, and he surely isn’t Damian, steadfast logic he must rationalize, placate. Bruce is, strangely enough, out of his realm with the young boy. Ramsey looks smaller, tucked against Oliver, his eyes not as focused as they once were, the light in them dimmed, and Bruce, besides himself with the sensation of sinking, doesn’t know how to meet this challenge through the morass of fear he wades through. And, for once, The Batman—met with surmounting this unknown battle that does not require his rage, his intellect, his particular brand of justice— is silent. He cannot help him here, with this fight. But, despite slipping away behind him, Bruce feels Clark’s hand, against his shoulder blades. Oliver’s phantom mouth curling against his cheek. And, ripped and unearthed, bones half-rattling, Bruce hears Thomas, the curving lilt of his tone, a perpetual lullaby poised on his lips, ready to whisk away each hurt, each pain. What would they say, these men? How would they meet the boy’s eyes and his question?
Bruce swallows, and rasps, after a moment too-long, shattering his self-imposed silence: “Yes.”
Oliver almost sighs, a looseness coursing warm through his muscles when Bruce answers Ramsey, /Bruce/ and not Batman. “There you go, poppet,” he tells the boy. “And now it’s time for you to get some sleep. You can stay here with me or you can go back with Lian and her dad and Mia and Mar’i, whatever you want.”
Ramsey looks at Bruce for a long time, eyelids growing heavier and heavier at that simple answer. It was all he needed. “I’ll help you,” he offers, before looking back up at Ollie, brown locks disheveling as he twists his head. “I should go sleep with sissy,” he mumbles, lips as heavy as his eyelids. “She hugs me like I’m Kiki, I’d feel bad if she was alone…”
Bruce looks to Oliver, his brow knitting a touch.
Oliver stands up with the bundle of child, Ramsey’s limbs going lax and heavy with each moment that sleep winds up through him. It takes him a moment to wrestle his emotions back under control, because Ramsey’s words — his desire to comfort his brand-new sister, in the absence of her beloved dog — it steals his breath, makes his mouth soft with the sudden want to be /home/. But the feeling is fleeting, and he moves over to kiss Bruce again, slowly and tenderly. “I’m so proud of you,” Ollie says, the fierceness in his voice sweeping away the lingering sweetness of the kiss. “I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go talk to Clark.” He gives Bruce one more kiss and then heads out to Bungalow and the family he has there, preparing himself to give them an abbreviated version of what happened.
Bruce inhales, nodding as Oliver kisses him, not releasing the breath. He continues to clean, setting the tools to be sterilized aside in a separate kidney bowl, rearranging the supplies, taking another quick count of what he has, what he might need to return to the Raven Terminal for. Bruce doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Oliver returns, not even fifteen minutes after having left, the now-sleeping Ramsey still in his arms. He exhales, heavily, his eyes on the child, before lifting to Oliver for explanation.
Oliver shrugs. “Clark said the paper can wait,” he explains, “and I just wanted Ram to fall asleep knowing Mia had him to snuggle up with. We’ll keep him here, with us, Bruce.” He kisses Ramsey’s head, his lips warming instantly with the familiarity of the motion, how many times he’s done it over the past hour. “Thank you for all of this.”
Bruce moves to the bed, pulling the covers down and arranging the pillows in a way that allows the boy to have his own pillow. He smoothes the sheets down, undoing the layers and watching as Oliver sets the boy down; Bruce gently unties Ramsey’s shoes, and slips them off. He sets them by the door out to the narrow corridor, arranging them neatly, and returns to assist Oliver in covering the boy up, the nightly chill returning, on the dot. When the covers are pulled up, Bruce catches Oliver’s eye and nods, to the hallway. He slips out of the room, heading towards the washroom, to wait for Oliver.
Oliver toes off his own shoes and leaves them in an untidy heap by the bed as Bruce neatly puts Ramsey’s sneakers by the door. In sleep the child looks even more like Kate; Ollie can see the high cheekbones under the baby fat, the precise sweep of the eyelashes. He leaves Ramsey then — it gets hard to look at him — and goes to join Bruce in the washroom. “My Bruce,” he says, but he doesn’t touch the other man, not yet. There’s something still brittle in the air and Ollie doesn’t want to blunder over it, shatter it, destroy anything unwittingly.
Bruce leans his hip against the sink, not sitting on the edge, because he would tip it, surely. One hand curls against the porcelain, knuckles white with tension, as another hand scrubs at his face, roughly, before he curls his hand over his mouth, rubbing his thumb against the inside crescent of his cheekbone.
Oliver reaches out to rub his fingers along Bruce’s, clenching the cold smoothness at the edge of the sink. “Are you doing okay? With … having told him.”
Bruce shakes his head, as that isn’t even on his mind. “Why—” His throat closes up a bit, before he swallows, clears it. “Who was talking to him, Oliver?” Bruce doesn’t believe, for a moment, that the woman Ramsey was referring to, was Kate.
"It wasn’t Kate." That comes out without a moment’s hesitation, because Ollie knows that, for truth, even if he’s sketchy on the rest of the answer. "I don’t know who or what it was. People are seeing things, hearing things. Maybe tomorrow when we look at that paper he had, it’ll tell us more."
Bruce looks to the other man, his gaze heavy. “Why did he say you vomited machines, Queen?”
Oliver purses his mouth. “Needles. I didn’t know he saw me, but I…” Ollie moves forward, then, bringing their chests together so he can prop his chin on Bruce’s shoulder, put his free hand around to the back of Bruce’s waist. He stares at his own reflection in the mirror when he confesses, “I’ve been seeing Kate. And I’ve been…blanking out, now and again, saying things. Never for long, but I don’t know I’m saying them. I was saying Lewis Carroll things to Kane and then I vomited up needles and mud, Bruce.” His reflection stares at him flatly.
Bruce moves both his hands to Oliver’s wrists, not allowing him to flee when he pulls back, stepping and turning them so Oliver isn’t staring into the mirror. He looks at Oliver, his teeth grit. “..and this wasn’t something you thought you should bring up, when I ask you if you’re losing your mind?”
Oliver twists his mouth, eyes narrowing. He looks down when he answers, at Bruce’s chest, the dip of the scrub neckline. “It’s not the first time I’ve had blankouts,” he mutters, petulantly. “And I didn’t lose my mind back then, and I was, what — Ramsey’s age — so I didn’t think this counted as me losing my mind, no. It seemed more like … stress. Or something.” It sounds like a pathetic reason when he says it out loud, and Ollie glares at Bruce for making him say it aloud in the first place.
Bruce repeats: “You vomited needles when you were Ramsey’s age.” He says it as if he knew the other half of the conversation already. Instinctively.
Oliver blinks back up at Bruce. “What? I — no, I …” He stops, spreads his hands out against Bruce’s wrists, not trying to break the hold Bruce has on his. “No. When I was Ramsey’s age I started blanking out all the time. After, y’know, after my parents died. There’s big holes in what I remember about when I was little. But…Bruce, I tried to /swallow/ needles. I didn’t remember that until right now.”
Bruce ‘s brow knits, his countenance storming over as he looks at the other man, releasing one of Ollie’s wrists, to push his hand over his hairline. He shoves the mass of hair back, leaning forward to kiss his forehead, pulling Oliver against his chest.
Oliver digs his fingers into Bruce’s back, swallowing over and over as if he can feel the needles he’d tried to get down lodged there in his throat. “I’m not crazy,” he tells the other man, hoarsely. “I’m seeing things and saying things but I’ve got one of the best grips on what this place is and how to live in it. You need to believe me on that one.”
Bruce doesn’t acknowledge, one way or another, what his own opinion on his sanity is. He isn’t the person to be making that judgment call, not like this and not when Oliver is telling him, point-blank, that he’s fine. He pulls back, nodding, as he presses his mouth against the corner of the other man’s own, less a kiss and more a way to feed his words straight into the archer’s lungs. “You’ll tell me the moment you.. don’t have that grip anymore.” It isn’t request from him.
After what they just saw, after everything that’s happened so far and that’s gonna happen, Ollie doesn’t have it in him to fight this request. “All right,” he says. “You’ll be the first to know. So if you need to, you can take … measures.” He laughs, a little wildly. “Stake through the heart, since we don’t have any silver bullets or shotguns.”
Bruce ducks his mouth, his hand sliding up to grip the wide, broad flare of Oliver’s jaw, his fingers tightening over the bone. He kisses him, part of it being that he wants to, the other.. the laughter. It does nothing to warm him, in fact, it sends a cold, hard dagger between his ribs, cracking in along his sternum. He wants to shut it up. Wants to swallow the rough edges of the noise and make it stop.
That’s enough to take away all and any desire that Ollie has to discuss this further, to discuss /anything/ more until they’ve had some fucking sleep and the sunshine wakes them up in the morning. “Okay,” he murmurs finally, all traces of laughter having subsided. He drags his fingertips down Bruce’s face. “Let’s go keep our little one company and close guard, you ‘n me.”
Bruce nods, pressing his hand to Oliver’s jaw once more, before he kisses his mouth, his chin. He drops his hand, pulling the other man from the bathroom and shutting the door behind them. He pushes Oliver ahead of him, towards the bedroom, as he goes to the front door of the bungalow. He closes it, before he retires to the same room, bending to unlace his boots and line them up next to Ramsey’s, Ollie’s own. Bruce tries to ignore, fails, and rearranges Oliver’s shoes, into a neat line.
Oliver laughs at that, and it’s a more golden timbre than the looping laugh in the bathroom, as Ollie changes into pyjama pants and a t-shirt and gets into bed. “Alfred taught you well,” he notes, then settles down flat on the mattress and turns towards Ramsey, who’s sleeping soundly. “Come lie down, then, when the room’s tidy enough.”
Bruce does his circuit of the room, and then, finally, settles down, in the clothes he had changed into after showering from chopping wood. He is on his side immediately, because there is no other way for him to lay down. He murmurs, quietly, to Oliver, his eyes drawn to Ramsey’s sleeping face. “If Dick’s still working the schedule he has been, he’ll be heading in to bed in three hours.. I’ll be up then, to take over.”
Oliver knows better than to argue. Might as well take away a Bat’s security blanket as soon as try to get one to not go on patrol, especially the daddy of ‘em all. Exercise in futility. “All right,” he says. “I’ll be here. Asleep, but here.” The minute he lets his head relax against the pillow, Ollie knows he’s gonna drift off fast and hard, so he murmurs, “You and me have things to talk about tomorrow, dearheart. If I can help get you the answers you’re looking for, I will.” He barely manages to get the last words out before he’s asleep.
Bruce reaches across Ramsey, carefully, and settles his hand against the lowest part of Oliver’s ribcage, and watches him, as he drifts off to sleep.