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)
thejusticelounge2014-07-19 04:28 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-07-19 04:28 pm
excavation
Ollie has never liked Arkham. It’s not as if he’s been here so many times that he’s either built up a particular hatred for it or become inured to it; just that it’s so … fresh. “You’d think the damn place would be about decay and rot,” he mutters, moving carefully around some hanging, exposed wires, “but it’s not. It smells like a pig cut open fresh. Like new blood.” The emergency lights are all that’s on in the hallways. With no more inmates and the bodies of the guards moved out, Arkham’s whistling in the wind, scooped out like an eye socket. Ollie pauses, his reinforced Bat-constructed costume a blessing in the disarray — it has long sleeves — and looks over at Mar’i. “This is where you were?”
Mari shifts another thick slab of concrete from where it lays between them and further access to the failsafe corridor. She doesn’t respond, pushing the sleeve of her blouse—tattered now, and dirty—back onto her shoulder before reaching for another rock. “Mm,” she finally murmurs.
Ollie steps through the opening that Mar’i had cleared, pausing at the first door. “Poison Ivy,” he reads on the nameplate, and starts to take a step into the cell before he changes his mind, backpedaling, blood racing a little bit faster. “Jesus, it’s like a …” Ollie shakes his head, leaving the sentence where it is. Her pheromones must have gotten stronger since he’d tangled with her last. “You think they knew they were getting sprung? Or they just took advantage of it when it happened? Big-timers like this, they’re nothing if not opportunistic as all hell.”
Mari shakes her head. “I got here just a few minutes before the power went off. There’s no way they could’ve gotten out that fast with no warning.” She moves another slab, barely registering Ivy’s thick smell or the twisting vines still reaching for up the now-dead artificial lighting.
Ollie moves forward through the hallway as Mar’i clears their path, her tall frame almost glowing in the dirty darkness. Bioluminescence, like a mushroom, Ollie muses, but the frivolous thought is pushed from his mind by the next nameplate. “Zsasz.” And across the hall: “Killer Croc.” Ollie looks over at Mar’i again. “Was he around in your time? The Joker? You ever take him on?”
Mari pauses, or rather, freezes. “He killed Lois Lane when I was twelve. I was…away when they finally put him on trial. Magog killed him the moment he entered the courtroom,” she replies, almost curtly, taking a moment to look into Zsasz’s cell, where thick lines are carved into the rock. Tallies.
"Killed him the moment he entered the courtroom," Ollie repeats, thoughtfully, looking at the Scarecrow’s nameplate. "I’ve always been anti-death penalty. But you always think there’s that one person who you’d change your mind for, y’know? That one person who’s taken so many innocent lives — or even grungy guilty lives, it stops being all that different once the tally gets high enough — that one person who’s fucking /earned/ a send-off." He stoops to investigate a charred line leading around one of the doorways before dismissing it as an old stain, some previous breakout attempt involving plastic explosives. "Maybe even that one person you’d be happy to throw the switch on yourself."
"The gang wars are going to start soon," Mar’i says, almost non-sequitur except for the empty cells around them. She moves more and more of the rubble from the path, still miles away from the Cave. "He’s compromised. It doesn’t take two and two to put it all together. And none of them have any moral qualms about killing." She straightens up, dusting her knees. "It’s going to get ugly."
"The cops’ll have their hands full dealing with turf wars and crossfire, that’s for damn sure." Ollie makes a cursory move at clearing some of the rubble, but it’s all heavy and awkward in these close quarters, the specialized cells, and soon he leaves the task for Mar’i’s much more capable hands and muscle. Then he asks the question that’s been nagging him since the last explosion, the one that leveled that familiar, beloved home in the Palisades: "You think he’s told the rest of them who B is? Who Batman is?" Even with the halls cleared of any sentient being other than themselves, Ollie can’t bring himself to speak Bruce’s name aloud in Arkham, not in connection with the Bat.
"Don’t know that he has to," she murmurs. "Even if he’s the only one who took that route, the others probably knew where he was going. What blew up may’ve been more of a surprise for them, but they’re not all idiots."
Ollie grunts, not liking this answer at all. He thinks of the Joker in Mar’i’s time, silencing smart, fast-patter Lois. The Joker here, bloodying a crowbar with Jason’s death. The Joker destroying the last bastion of hallowed family for Bruce. “Maybe he hasn’t,” he mumbles, spitting into a corner in a vain attempt to get that fresh taste from his mouth. “Maybe he doesn’t want them to know, because that’ll spoil his fun. Spoil the punchline.” Squinting, Ollie peers down the hallway, the progressive darkness and rubble they’ve been delving into. “That the Joker’s cell coming up? Shit, we’re already at the end of the hallway. I thought there’d be more of them.” Looking back, it’s a stupid comment, since the empty cells each represent dozens of dead people and more on the way.
Mari shrugs. “If he does know, we have to hope he’s like that asshole Riddler—games have to come before answers. And then we’ll just have to get to him before the games end.” She rubs her eyes, blinking when a bit of dust scrapes into her eye socket. “The only question is how.”
Ollie stares at the dark chasm of what used to be the Joker’s high-security cell. “We offer him a game he’d be interested in,” he says. “Long enough for us to nab him again.”
"No, he won’t play our games," Mar’i shakes her head. "What’s in his mind…it’s a game, per se, but it’s not anything we can ever think up. Nothing we can match. We can’t make something up, we have to play."
Ollie scowls, shoving hair off of his forehead with an irritated swipe of his glove. “This is why it’s better to work in Star. No themed crazies, no rogues’ gallery that gives you migraines just thinkin’ about ‘em.”
Mari raises an eyebrow and glances over her shoulder at Ollie. “Really? Are you forgetting that dude that dresses up like a goth version of you? Or that kung-fu asshole that helped the Riddler kidnap Roy and beat the shit out of Mia and Connor?”
Ollie says shortly, “Kung-fu asshole’s dead, last I heard. And Merlyn’s … well, okay, I’ll give you Merlyn. But that’s it! I don’t have the walk-in closet like the Bats do! Whole different ball a’ wax.”
Mari shrugs and returns to removing rubble from the path. “The meta boom hasn’t even happened yet. Don’t count your chickens before they hit puberty.”
Ollie sighs and starts shifting chunks of brick. “Sometimes talking to you can be very disheartening, Mar’i. It’s no fun being a wildly hypothetical person around somebody who knows what the future’s gonna look like.” He stoops and sifts out a hardcover book from the debris, holding it up to read the soiled all-caps title stamped into its front: “‘1,001 Dirty Limericks’.”
Mari pauses. “I didn’t know this was gonna happen again. There are so many differences that I just…I just assumed.” Mar’i furrows her brow. “I’m no prophet.”
"And I’m no detective. Yet here we are, at scenic Arkham, trying to chase down clues and predict our most successful course of action."
Mari pauses yet again. “If I…” she scrubs at her eyes again. “If I marry him, is this gonna happen to us? Are they gonna come for…for our home?”
Ollie drops the book, looking at Mar’i. “Yeah,” he says, making no attempt to cover it up. “That’s gonna happen. It’s always gonna be a danger. There’s no place that’s really safe.” Ollie rubs his fingertips together, feeling the grit on them even through his gloves. “Although. The Manor felt like that, for me. The only place that did.”
Mari stiffens slightly, and resumes her work. There’s extra force now, unnecessary, in the way she shoves the chunks of concrete aside. It’s clear after a moment that she’s crying, although she makes no attempt to wipe at her face. “Yeah,” she replies quietly, kicking at a large piece of metal until it bends enough to show the beginning of the failsafe entry. “It’s straight rubble until the Cave,” Mar’i grunts, nodding at it.
Ollie reaches out and holds her wrist, fingers latching over the roundness of it. “It won’t ever be totally safe, but you’ll never be alone,” he says. “That’s the way I look at it.”
Mari snuffles once, then a second time, and begins wailing at the top of her lungs. It’s been more than 48 hours since she’s slept, and Mar’i feels it now, crushing down on her, nearly stronger than the pure rage that been fueling her this long. She mourns the secret connecting staircase between the second floor grandfather clock and the first floor pantry, and the way the Cave smelled after a storm. The willow tree that she can’t bear to ask about, and the little griffins decorating the gate near the gardens. Heartsick, and scared, Mar’i cries over it all.
Ollie puts his arms around her (his soon-to-be daughter-in-law, might as well get started now) and turns them both away from the rubble. “We can’t do anything more here,” he says, some of the bleakness in her wails making its way into his voice. “Not from this side, not just the two of us. And you could do with some rest, posy. It’s been a rough few days for your family. Your side of the family.” For his part, Ollie’s put it aside, at a distance; arm’s length is where the Manor sits for now, waiting until he’s gotten enough work done before it can be mourned properly. There’s too many people with a bigger claim on the place than he has, and they need support, they need people to be making headway on the escaped Arkhamites. Ollie starts leading Mar’i down the hall again, back the way they’d come.
Mari manages to control herself a little, calmed by Ollie’s hold. “I-it’s your side of the family too,” she sputters, wiping her face. But Mar’i won’t protest much more than that. They’re heading upstairs now, and as the second night of desolation settles over Gotham, Mar’i knows she won’t be able to stay awake for most of it. “Hell,” she murmurs, clearly getting drowsy, “you’re more a part of it than I am.”
Mari shifts another thick slab of concrete from where it lays between them and further access to the failsafe corridor. She doesn’t respond, pushing the sleeve of her blouse—tattered now, and dirty—back onto her shoulder before reaching for another rock. “Mm,” she finally murmurs.
Ollie steps through the opening that Mar’i had cleared, pausing at the first door. “Poison Ivy,” he reads on the nameplate, and starts to take a step into the cell before he changes his mind, backpedaling, blood racing a little bit faster. “Jesus, it’s like a …” Ollie shakes his head, leaving the sentence where it is. Her pheromones must have gotten stronger since he’d tangled with her last. “You think they knew they were getting sprung? Or they just took advantage of it when it happened? Big-timers like this, they’re nothing if not opportunistic as all hell.”
Mari shakes her head. “I got here just a few minutes before the power went off. There’s no way they could’ve gotten out that fast with no warning.” She moves another slab, barely registering Ivy’s thick smell or the twisting vines still reaching for up the now-dead artificial lighting.
Ollie moves forward through the hallway as Mar’i clears their path, her tall frame almost glowing in the dirty darkness. Bioluminescence, like a mushroom, Ollie muses, but the frivolous thought is pushed from his mind by the next nameplate. “Zsasz.” And across the hall: “Killer Croc.” Ollie looks over at Mar’i again. “Was he around in your time? The Joker? You ever take him on?”
Mari pauses, or rather, freezes. “He killed Lois Lane when I was twelve. I was…away when they finally put him on trial. Magog killed him the moment he entered the courtroom,” she replies, almost curtly, taking a moment to look into Zsasz’s cell, where thick lines are carved into the rock. Tallies.
"Killed him the moment he entered the courtroom," Ollie repeats, thoughtfully, looking at the Scarecrow’s nameplate. "I’ve always been anti-death penalty. But you always think there’s that one person who you’d change your mind for, y’know? That one person who’s taken so many innocent lives — or even grungy guilty lives, it stops being all that different once the tally gets high enough — that one person who’s fucking /earned/ a send-off." He stoops to investigate a charred line leading around one of the doorways before dismissing it as an old stain, some previous breakout attempt involving plastic explosives. "Maybe even that one person you’d be happy to throw the switch on yourself."
"The gang wars are going to start soon," Mar’i says, almost non-sequitur except for the empty cells around them. She moves more and more of the rubble from the path, still miles away from the Cave. "He’s compromised. It doesn’t take two and two to put it all together. And none of them have any moral qualms about killing." She straightens up, dusting her knees. "It’s going to get ugly."
"The cops’ll have their hands full dealing with turf wars and crossfire, that’s for damn sure." Ollie makes a cursory move at clearing some of the rubble, but it’s all heavy and awkward in these close quarters, the specialized cells, and soon he leaves the task for Mar’i’s much more capable hands and muscle. Then he asks the question that’s been nagging him since the last explosion, the one that leveled that familiar, beloved home in the Palisades: "You think he’s told the rest of them who B is? Who Batman is?" Even with the halls cleared of any sentient being other than themselves, Ollie can’t bring himself to speak Bruce’s name aloud in Arkham, not in connection with the Bat.
"Don’t know that he has to," she murmurs. "Even if he’s the only one who took that route, the others probably knew where he was going. What blew up may’ve been more of a surprise for them, but they’re not all idiots."
Ollie grunts, not liking this answer at all. He thinks of the Joker in Mar’i’s time, silencing smart, fast-patter Lois. The Joker here, bloodying a crowbar with Jason’s death. The Joker destroying the last bastion of hallowed family for Bruce. “Maybe he hasn’t,” he mumbles, spitting into a corner in a vain attempt to get that fresh taste from his mouth. “Maybe he doesn’t want them to know, because that’ll spoil his fun. Spoil the punchline.” Squinting, Ollie peers down the hallway, the progressive darkness and rubble they’ve been delving into. “That the Joker’s cell coming up? Shit, we’re already at the end of the hallway. I thought there’d be more of them.” Looking back, it’s a stupid comment, since the empty cells each represent dozens of dead people and more on the way.
Mari shrugs. “If he does know, we have to hope he’s like that asshole Riddler—games have to come before answers. And then we’ll just have to get to him before the games end.” She rubs her eyes, blinking when a bit of dust scrapes into her eye socket. “The only question is how.”
Ollie stares at the dark chasm of what used to be the Joker’s high-security cell. “We offer him a game he’d be interested in,” he says. “Long enough for us to nab him again.”
"No, he won’t play our games," Mar’i shakes her head. "What’s in his mind…it’s a game, per se, but it’s not anything we can ever think up. Nothing we can match. We can’t make something up, we have to play."
Ollie scowls, shoving hair off of his forehead with an irritated swipe of his glove. “This is why it’s better to work in Star. No themed crazies, no rogues’ gallery that gives you migraines just thinkin’ about ‘em.”
Mari raises an eyebrow and glances over her shoulder at Ollie. “Really? Are you forgetting that dude that dresses up like a goth version of you? Or that kung-fu asshole that helped the Riddler kidnap Roy and beat the shit out of Mia and Connor?”
Ollie says shortly, “Kung-fu asshole’s dead, last I heard. And Merlyn’s … well, okay, I’ll give you Merlyn. But that’s it! I don’t have the walk-in closet like the Bats do! Whole different ball a’ wax.”
Mari shrugs and returns to removing rubble from the path. “The meta boom hasn’t even happened yet. Don’t count your chickens before they hit puberty.”
Ollie sighs and starts shifting chunks of brick. “Sometimes talking to you can be very disheartening, Mar’i. It’s no fun being a wildly hypothetical person around somebody who knows what the future’s gonna look like.” He stoops and sifts out a hardcover book from the debris, holding it up to read the soiled all-caps title stamped into its front: “‘1,001 Dirty Limericks’.”
Mari pauses. “I didn’t know this was gonna happen again. There are so many differences that I just…I just assumed.” Mar’i furrows her brow. “I’m no prophet.”
"And I’m no detective. Yet here we are, at scenic Arkham, trying to chase down clues and predict our most successful course of action."
Mari pauses yet again. “If I…” she scrubs at her eyes again. “If I marry him, is this gonna happen to us? Are they gonna come for…for our home?”
Ollie drops the book, looking at Mar’i. “Yeah,” he says, making no attempt to cover it up. “That’s gonna happen. It’s always gonna be a danger. There’s no place that’s really safe.” Ollie rubs his fingertips together, feeling the grit on them even through his gloves. “Although. The Manor felt like that, for me. The only place that did.”
Mari stiffens slightly, and resumes her work. There’s extra force now, unnecessary, in the way she shoves the chunks of concrete aside. It’s clear after a moment that she’s crying, although she makes no attempt to wipe at her face. “Yeah,” she replies quietly, kicking at a large piece of metal until it bends enough to show the beginning of the failsafe entry. “It’s straight rubble until the Cave,” Mar’i grunts, nodding at it.
Ollie reaches out and holds her wrist, fingers latching over the roundness of it. “It won’t ever be totally safe, but you’ll never be alone,” he says. “That’s the way I look at it.”
Mari snuffles once, then a second time, and begins wailing at the top of her lungs. It’s been more than 48 hours since she’s slept, and Mar’i feels it now, crushing down on her, nearly stronger than the pure rage that been fueling her this long. She mourns the secret connecting staircase between the second floor grandfather clock and the first floor pantry, and the way the Cave smelled after a storm. The willow tree that she can’t bear to ask about, and the little griffins decorating the gate near the gardens. Heartsick, and scared, Mar’i cries over it all.
Ollie puts his arms around her (his soon-to-be daughter-in-law, might as well get started now) and turns them both away from the rubble. “We can’t do anything more here,” he says, some of the bleakness in her wails making its way into his voice. “Not from this side, not just the two of us. And you could do with some rest, posy. It’s been a rough few days for your family. Your side of the family.” For his part, Ollie’s put it aside, at a distance; arm’s length is where the Manor sits for now, waiting until he’s gotten enough work done before it can be mourned properly. There’s too many people with a bigger claim on the place than he has, and they need support, they need people to be making headway on the escaped Arkhamites. Ollie starts leading Mar’i down the hall again, back the way they’d come.
Mari manages to control herself a little, calmed by Ollie’s hold. “I-it’s your side of the family too,” she sputters, wiping her face. But Mar’i won’t protest much more than that. They’re heading upstairs now, and as the second night of desolation settles over Gotham, Mar’i knows she won’t be able to stay awake for most of it. “Hell,” she murmurs, clearly getting drowsy, “you’re more a part of it than I am.”