miss maggie (
bossymarmalade) wrote in
thejusticelounge2014-07-19 08:01 am
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panopticon
"The results are back."
Bruce speaks to Ollie as he enters the study, all of the children more or less down for the night.
Ollie looks up, startled. For a moment he almost starts to pretend he’d been doing something, anything useful, instead of being completely dopey and daydreamy, but eventually dismisses that as pointless. He closes the collected Dickens in his lap and turns his full attention to Bruce. “What’s the verdict?” he asks, lips pulling back in an unconscious grimace.
Bruce shakes head, and his expression says it all. “Nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate anything is wrong. They are all normal, healthy children.” He crosses his arms, leans back against the desk. “Labs are normal. Perfect, really, with the exception of Jason: he’s showing early signs of malnutrition..” Bruce exhales. “Which means that his biology is probably exactly where it was when he was actually five years old.”
Bruce looks at Ollie. “And Roy’s liver and kidney function are in an optimal state.”
Ollie looks at Bruce, frozen and still like a fox startled halfway into the henhouse. Then he laughs, and the sound is strange on Ollie — /flustered/ — as he rubs a hand through his loose, shaggy hair and admits, “…I thought you meant Talia. The results for Talia. I thought there was more news on her condition.”
Bruce blinks, and then, admits. “I haven’t been.. As vigilant with that as I should be, not with—” He realizes, immediately, that his distraction with the children might actually serve another purpose. “..With them having turned into children, I haven’t been as focused as I normally would be.” Bruce nods, and gestures to the grandfather clock. He pushes the hands of the clock, opening the passageway, and moves, swiftly, down into the darkness of the Cave.
Ollie gets up and follows after him, the motions through the clock and then closing it behind them, making their way down into the Cave, more familiar each time he performs them. “So this creature turned them back to exactly the bodily states they had when they were these ages,” he recaps, going back to Bruce’s actual news. “That seems in line with what its general demeanour is like. It wouldn’t make sense for it to give Roy the body of a kindergartener with, I dunno, fetal alcohol or something.” That makes him grimace again and Ollie realizes he’s mindlessly brought his book down with him. Sighing, he tosses it onto a table and then hops up next to it. “But this doesn’t help us get them back to a proper age.”
Bruce shakes his head. “Unless the whole thing is to distract us—you, Rayner—” He grimaces. “Me, with something that isn’t what we should be focusing on.” He arches his eyebrows. “It’s extravagant and extreme, but it wouldn’t be the first—” He stops. “Computer, bring up every live feed at Arkham and visitors log for the past month.” He moves over to where Oliver is, and kisses his mouth, ostensibly because he hadn’t upon entering the study, but there is something else there, something softer in the pursing of his lips.
Ollie takes the liberty of closing his fingers around Bruce’s thick wrist, holding him there while they kiss. It’s not like the gesture is perfunctory on Bruce’s part, but Ollie likes this, likes the new shades of gentle intimacy and his own presumptions on Bruce’s time, attention, physicality. “You can’t,” he says when the feeds from Arkham begin to resolve on the screens, “possibly think that even Ra’s and Talia could come up with something like this. That’s insane.”
Bruce stares at Oliver, for a hard. Long. Moment.
Ollie blows out a breath. “Okay,” he concedes, “but they couldn’t do it the way it happened. Unless they’re recruiting unpredictable otherworldly beings into the League of Assassins now.”
Bruce looks up at the feeds, and begins to go through each and everyone. And there they are, in glorious technicolor, each of the rooms. There are little-knowns, unknowns, and the big ones, spanning across the screens as Bruce moves through them. Strange. Calendar Man. Zasz. Croc. Ivy. Clayface. His expression remains neutral, until he moves onto the last screen, the final one, the one he always saves for last: him.
Bruce looks up at the screen, his mouth dropping at the edges as he looks at the man, standing motionless in the center of his expansive cell. The walls are lined in a patented polymer: he can’t tear out the fabric or even pieces of the stuffing, but it keeps him safe from running head onto into the corners and edges of the room. There is no mattress for him, nothing that he can use to create a weapon, no chair, no table, no windows, and so he stands, unmoving, staring, fixated at a single spot.
Ollie falls silent as Bruce fixates, and although he always finds the Cave too cold for his Californian blood, it’s not the temperature that makes a chill run through him. It’s the mirror images: Joker standing still in his room on the other side of the screen, Bruce … no, /Batman/ … just as ramrod-straight and motionless on his.
Bruce doesn’t settle, doesn’t linger on it, and instead, with a swipe of his hand, moves to the visitor’s logs. He speaks to the Computer. “Computer, run comparison of these logs to all previous ones dating back five years.” He looks back at Ollie and states. “There’s nothing wrong with them, Oliver, absolutely nothing wrong, which means that they were just turned into children for no reason.” And it’s obvious that the lack of logic in that statement bothers him.
Ollie hops down off the table and moves over to stand under the looming bank of screens, peering up at them as images and light flicker piecemeal over their skin. “They were turned into children as some sort of … life lesson,” he offers. “Some way of coming to grips with events from their pasts. A second chance, an alien-gifted reincarnation.” He glances at Bruce. “I guess I’m taking a more esoteric view of a loopedy-loo situation than you are. /I’m/ thinking that when they learn whatever lesson it is that they need to, experience whatever they need to experience, they’ll turn back.”
Bruce looks over at Ollie, as the idea slips through his mind, picking up the pieces of an otherwise dismal and illogical situation. He cants his head to one side. “And how long do you think it will take for them to experience that, if that is the case?” Ollie rolls one shoulder in a shrug.
"You can’t hurry revelations," he says, philosophically. "If I’m right — and that’s a helluva big if — then I’d say it’ll take until each of them comes to some realization that’ll soothe a childhood pain that they’ve carried into adulthood."
Bruce exhales, and looks up at the screens again, at the relative stillness of Arkham, before he looks back at Oliver. He nods, and murmurs. “Do you want to take him back to Star?”
Ollie scratches his chin. “He … my first instinct is to say that he should stay here and be around Mar’i, since, y’know. But maybe if I take him back, to where I raised him, whatever the purpose of this … /childening/ is will come to fruition. Y’think?”
Bruce nods, in agreement and glances towards the stairs, up, towards the rest of the Manor, above ground, before he muses out loud: “And what will do I with the other two? Take them to homes they never had?” He shakes his head, and exhales, looks down at Ollie. “I don’t like that they were chosen.”
Ollie points out, “It changed me too. Only changed me back because you asked it to. So either I’m not gonna be learning any lessons, or…” Ollie abandons the thought there, not having any particular way to end it. “And don’t be ridiculous. Roy wasn’t with me at five, but Star is his home. Mar’i and Jason might not have been with you, but this is /their/ home.”
Bruce looks over at him, and muses, unwilling to let the subject go: “..you’re learning your lessons here, now?”
Ollie says, distractedly, “Baby, I’m forever learning lessons. Eternal fucking student, me.” His attention’s back on the Arkham feed, searching out among the cycling displays the Joker’s cell. Ollie can’t quite get it out of his head that the Joker will move, one of these moments, will look directly at the screen and /smile/ as if he knows they’re there. Some invisible current between him and the Bat that forever shadows his movements.
Bruce explains, briefly. “I asked it to because I knew I’d need you.” He gestures in front of them, between them, as if demonstrating that the conversation they were having was proof enough that he was right. He looks at where Ollie is looking and reaches out, to gently turn the archer’s face back to look at him. “Because that is what my life is like now, needing you here, Ollie.”
Ollie has no attention for the denizens of Arkham, now, not with Bruce commanding his entire focus with that statement. “Yeah,” Ollie says, then smiles, leaning in to kiss Bruce. “Yes. And I’ll always be with you. Even if I’m contradicting you all the way.”
Bruce smirks, and shakes his head, as he moves to settle in and read the Computer analysis of the logs. “You can leave the in morning,” he says, with all the imperiousness of a child-king.
Ollie rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest. He doesn’t like to admit it, but Arkham and its fathomless madness make him unsettled; it’ll be good to stay, the night, and keep Bruce safe by his side.
Bruce speaks to Ollie as he enters the study, all of the children more or less down for the night.
Ollie looks up, startled. For a moment he almost starts to pretend he’d been doing something, anything useful, instead of being completely dopey and daydreamy, but eventually dismisses that as pointless. He closes the collected Dickens in his lap and turns his full attention to Bruce. “What’s the verdict?” he asks, lips pulling back in an unconscious grimace.
Bruce shakes head, and his expression says it all. “Nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate anything is wrong. They are all normal, healthy children.” He crosses his arms, leans back against the desk. “Labs are normal. Perfect, really, with the exception of Jason: he’s showing early signs of malnutrition..” Bruce exhales. “Which means that his biology is probably exactly where it was when he was actually five years old.”
Bruce looks at Ollie. “And Roy’s liver and kidney function are in an optimal state.”
Ollie looks at Bruce, frozen and still like a fox startled halfway into the henhouse. Then he laughs, and the sound is strange on Ollie — /flustered/ — as he rubs a hand through his loose, shaggy hair and admits, “…I thought you meant Talia. The results for Talia. I thought there was more news on her condition.”
Bruce blinks, and then, admits. “I haven’t been.. As vigilant with that as I should be, not with—” He realizes, immediately, that his distraction with the children might actually serve another purpose. “..With them having turned into children, I haven’t been as focused as I normally would be.” Bruce nods, and gestures to the grandfather clock. He pushes the hands of the clock, opening the passageway, and moves, swiftly, down into the darkness of the Cave.
Ollie gets up and follows after him, the motions through the clock and then closing it behind them, making their way down into the Cave, more familiar each time he performs them. “So this creature turned them back to exactly the bodily states they had when they were these ages,” he recaps, going back to Bruce’s actual news. “That seems in line with what its general demeanour is like. It wouldn’t make sense for it to give Roy the body of a kindergartener with, I dunno, fetal alcohol or something.” That makes him grimace again and Ollie realizes he’s mindlessly brought his book down with him. Sighing, he tosses it onto a table and then hops up next to it. “But this doesn’t help us get them back to a proper age.”
Bruce shakes his head. “Unless the whole thing is to distract us—you, Rayner—” He grimaces. “Me, with something that isn’t what we should be focusing on.” He arches his eyebrows. “It’s extravagant and extreme, but it wouldn’t be the first—” He stops. “Computer, bring up every live feed at Arkham and visitors log for the past month.” He moves over to where Oliver is, and kisses his mouth, ostensibly because he hadn’t upon entering the study, but there is something else there, something softer in the pursing of his lips.
Ollie takes the liberty of closing his fingers around Bruce’s thick wrist, holding him there while they kiss. It’s not like the gesture is perfunctory on Bruce’s part, but Ollie likes this, likes the new shades of gentle intimacy and his own presumptions on Bruce’s time, attention, physicality. “You can’t,” he says when the feeds from Arkham begin to resolve on the screens, “possibly think that even Ra’s and Talia could come up with something like this. That’s insane.”
Bruce stares at Oliver, for a hard. Long. Moment.
Ollie blows out a breath. “Okay,” he concedes, “but they couldn’t do it the way it happened. Unless they’re recruiting unpredictable otherworldly beings into the League of Assassins now.”
Bruce looks up at the feeds, and begins to go through each and everyone. And there they are, in glorious technicolor, each of the rooms. There are little-knowns, unknowns, and the big ones, spanning across the screens as Bruce moves through them. Strange. Calendar Man. Zasz. Croc. Ivy. Clayface. His expression remains neutral, until he moves onto the last screen, the final one, the one he always saves for last: him.
Bruce looks up at the screen, his mouth dropping at the edges as he looks at the man, standing motionless in the center of his expansive cell. The walls are lined in a patented polymer: he can’t tear out the fabric or even pieces of the stuffing, but it keeps him safe from running head onto into the corners and edges of the room. There is no mattress for him, nothing that he can use to create a weapon, no chair, no table, no windows, and so he stands, unmoving, staring, fixated at a single spot.
Ollie falls silent as Bruce fixates, and although he always finds the Cave too cold for his Californian blood, it’s not the temperature that makes a chill run through him. It’s the mirror images: Joker standing still in his room on the other side of the screen, Bruce … no, /Batman/ … just as ramrod-straight and motionless on his.
Bruce doesn’t settle, doesn’t linger on it, and instead, with a swipe of his hand, moves to the visitor’s logs. He speaks to the Computer. “Computer, run comparison of these logs to all previous ones dating back five years.” He looks back at Ollie and states. “There’s nothing wrong with them, Oliver, absolutely nothing wrong, which means that they were just turned into children for no reason.” And it’s obvious that the lack of logic in that statement bothers him.
Ollie hops down off the table and moves over to stand under the looming bank of screens, peering up at them as images and light flicker piecemeal over their skin. “They were turned into children as some sort of … life lesson,” he offers. “Some way of coming to grips with events from their pasts. A second chance, an alien-gifted reincarnation.” He glances at Bruce. “I guess I’m taking a more esoteric view of a loopedy-loo situation than you are. /I’m/ thinking that when they learn whatever lesson it is that they need to, experience whatever they need to experience, they’ll turn back.”
Bruce looks over at Ollie, as the idea slips through his mind, picking up the pieces of an otherwise dismal and illogical situation. He cants his head to one side. “And how long do you think it will take for them to experience that, if that is the case?” Ollie rolls one shoulder in a shrug.
"You can’t hurry revelations," he says, philosophically. "If I’m right — and that’s a helluva big if — then I’d say it’ll take until each of them comes to some realization that’ll soothe a childhood pain that they’ve carried into adulthood."
Bruce exhales, and looks up at the screens again, at the relative stillness of Arkham, before he looks back at Oliver. He nods, and murmurs. “Do you want to take him back to Star?”
Ollie scratches his chin. “He … my first instinct is to say that he should stay here and be around Mar’i, since, y’know. But maybe if I take him back, to where I raised him, whatever the purpose of this … /childening/ is will come to fruition. Y’think?”
Bruce nods, in agreement and glances towards the stairs, up, towards the rest of the Manor, above ground, before he muses out loud: “And what will do I with the other two? Take them to homes they never had?” He shakes his head, and exhales, looks down at Ollie. “I don’t like that they were chosen.”
Ollie points out, “It changed me too. Only changed me back because you asked it to. So either I’m not gonna be learning any lessons, or…” Ollie abandons the thought there, not having any particular way to end it. “And don’t be ridiculous. Roy wasn’t with me at five, but Star is his home. Mar’i and Jason might not have been with you, but this is /their/ home.”
Bruce looks over at him, and muses, unwilling to let the subject go: “..you’re learning your lessons here, now?”
Ollie says, distractedly, “Baby, I’m forever learning lessons. Eternal fucking student, me.” His attention’s back on the Arkham feed, searching out among the cycling displays the Joker’s cell. Ollie can’t quite get it out of his head that the Joker will move, one of these moments, will look directly at the screen and /smile/ as if he knows they’re there. Some invisible current between him and the Bat that forever shadows his movements.
Bruce explains, briefly. “I asked it to because I knew I’d need you.” He gestures in front of them, between them, as if demonstrating that the conversation they were having was proof enough that he was right. He looks at where Ollie is looking and reaches out, to gently turn the archer’s face back to look at him. “Because that is what my life is like now, needing you here, Ollie.”
Ollie has no attention for the denizens of Arkham, now, not with Bruce commanding his entire focus with that statement. “Yeah,” Ollie says, then smiles, leaning in to kiss Bruce. “Yes. And I’ll always be with you. Even if I’m contradicting you all the way.”
Bruce smirks, and shakes his head, as he moves to settle in and read the Computer analysis of the logs. “You can leave the in morning,” he says, with all the imperiousness of a child-king.
Ollie rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest. He doesn’t like to admit it, but Arkham and its fathomless madness make him unsettled; it’ll be good to stay, the night, and keep Bruce safe by his side.