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thejusticelounge2014-10-29 09:33 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-10-29 09:33 am
he goes left and you stay right
K TXT: do you know why bruce is asking me if he’s gone crazy?
K TXT: because he hasn’t, at least not with regards to a psychotic break
K TXT: I mean, the usual ptsd, anxiety, and assorted neuroses still apply but
Ollie reads the texts and doesn’t answer them; instead he takes himself to the Gotham condo to talk to Kate face-to-face. “Hey,” he says when he lets himself in from the zeta pad, and not much more than that before, “I don’t know. Unless it’s something the Joker said to him.”
Kate looks up from her phone, slightly surprised to see Ollie, but only just. She’s got the modern equivalent of piles of paper and newspaper clippings and photographs scattered around her—all of this in a holoscreen version instead, linked back to the Watchtower mainframe. “Now that would make sense,” she says, brushing her hair back over her ear.
"I dunno what exactly the Joker said, though." Ollie sits down across from her, arms along the armrests of the chair, legs sprawled out. He sinks his chin down against his chest, the broody posture he keeps falling into lately. "I didn’t catch the guts of it."
"Probably all for the best," says Kate, and she flicks away the clutter with a wave of one hand, a flick of the wrist, turning on the barstool she’s sitting on to face him. "Listening to him’s never good for anyone’s head." She eyes his posture a little, brow slightly raised.
"Especially not Bruce’s." He thinks about that for a few moments, and then almost reluctantly amends, "—for Batman’s."
Kate considers this, then says, after her own analysis, “For either. But especially not Batman’s.” It was easier to deconstruct Bruce’s feelings. Batman was close to a goddamn brick wall.
"I don’t … /know/ anything about this. The Joker. Jason Tood. Arkham Asylum." Ollie looks over at Kate, fingers skittling on the armrests of his chair. "Knowing him as long as I have gives me no insight into this, Kate. I’m as much at a defecit when it comes to helping Batman with the Joker as I am at helping you with Walter Pratt." His fingers dig into the fabric, short nails still catching the fibres with a shrrring noise.
The digging does sort of give Ollie away, combined with what he’s actually saying, and Kate slips off her chair, pads over to him on bare feet, and perches on one armrest. “You’re a better help than you think,” she notes quietly. “Speaking of, it’s pretty clear Walter thinks you’re a threat.”
Ollie lifts his arm to drape it lightly over Kate’s hip, hand hovering over her belly. “Guess that’s something to be glad of,” he grunts. “Better than him thinking he can get to you through me or anything like that. Last thing you need is Dear Old fixating on the people in your life who’re /actually/ vulnerable.”
Kate’s about to respond before she actually thinks about what Ollie meant, and she shivers, leaning into him a little. “He hurt Peter more than he had to, more than just toying with him. Back in LA. I have no idea why.”
"Because he’s a sadistic fuck and gets off on hurting whoever he can," Ollie says, a bit more viciously than he intends to. He reflexively curls his hand in against Kate’s stomach, like some big paw pulling her closer in to him. "He did it for the sheer pleasure of hurting Peter and the bonus pleasure of hurting /you/. Because he hates you the most, Kate."
"I still don’t get why he bothers hating me so damn much anyway." Kate shifts, leans her head lightly (in case he doesn’t want it there) on Ollie’s shoulder. It’s the closest thing she can bring herself to do to what she wants (which is to cling and shiver).
Ollie shifts his shoulder under the pressure of Kate’s head, creating a space for her, although he doesn’t do what he normally would and pull her into his lap. Instead they stay perched and poised, tense but needing the physical contact, and he says, “He thought you were his to do what he wanted with. You and your mom, you were both his property and he could beat you when he wanted, kill you if he wanted. That’s why he tried to show you that he even owned your family, Peter and Ramsey, if he wanted them.”
He presses his fingertips into the flesh of her belly, one of the few places that Kate’s body has the telling softness of having carried a baby, of being a woman who’s lived her thirty-some-odd years. “But you ripped that out from under him, Kate, threw him ass over fucking teakettle and took away what he thought his power was. So he’ll never forgive you for that.”
While what Ollie says is something that Kate knows, has always known deep down, his stating it is like exposing something raw and rotten to the open air and sunlight that has been hidden away because it’s too awful to really think about. She makes a pained little sound choked back behind closed lips, and automatically turns her head to bury her face into Ollie’s shoulder, hard, even if she doesn’t shift down to curl up against him as she usually might, and she’s not crying.
After a moment or two, she says, softly, into the fabric, “Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to have a real dad,” before she clears her throat, straightens a little into Ollie’s hands, lets the rest of the thought shiver into the tension of her muscles and furrow of her brow. “It’s why it’s got to be me who stops him again, O.”
"You’re right." Ollie nods, bearded chin rubbing into Kate’s hair as he unconsciously tightens his arm around her to compensate for her shift in posture. "You have to do it. The same way if it ever comes down to that with the Joker, Bruce would have to be the one." He looks at her, gnawing on the inside of his bottom lip. "You’re the one he’s hurt the most. You have to be the one to end it all."
"It wouldn’t be over otherwise." Kate draws her face out of Ollie’s shoulder, turns so she rests her head there instead. "Maybe that’s why it’s never over for Bruce."
"With Bruce, I think, it’s…" Ollie rests his head against Kate’s. "Sometimes I feel like he’s simultaneously more emotionally stable than people give him credit for, and more emotionally stunted than anybody realizes, y’know?"
"Honestly, that’s exactly the conclusion I’ve come to myself." Kate puts her arm gently around Ollie’s shoulders, to balance herself as she’s sort of sliding against his side. "It’s what makes him him."
With this, Ollie finally gives up on trying to maintain some kind of hurt-proof cushion of space between them and scoops Kate in his arm, down against him in the chair. “And playing everything close to the vest while placing a premium on details and forthrightness is what makes you you,” he says. “But there’s a lot about both of your methods that can be pretty damn rough on the people who love you.” He swallows, and adds in a rougher voice, “—flawed as we are.”
"That’s the thing, Ollie…we’re all flawed. Me included. Me especially included." Kate hesitates for half a second, then nuzzles into Ollie, arm wrapping tighter around him, and the warm solidness of someone against her—not even sex, just being close to him—is something that’s like a warm bath or a just-right cup of coffee. "Otherwise it’d be damn creepy," she adds. "If any of us weren’t."
"Then why is it you both act like—"
He brings himself up short, snapping his lips shut on the words with a loud exhalation through his nose. “Anyhow,” Ollie says. “When you put Walt away this time, it’s gonna take. There’s no reason for it not to. You’ve gotten better at being Manhunter since the last time you faced him, Kate, and I’m betting he won’t expect that, will keep right on thinking that you’re a scared little girl deep inside who he can get on the run and break down mentally. But he’s wrong, and he’s gonna end up on the wrong side of this fight.”
"Like we’re right in being flawed?" Kate isn’t upset by this, states it straight out, quietly. "Because it’s been hard learning to process things in better ways, and it’s human nature to cling to Being Right, because the old thing seems like it should be right, because it’s easy and we know how to do it." She sighs, closes her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what my head would be like if it weren’t full of cognitive dissonance." For some reason, this is easier to talk about than not being a scared little girl. Probably because Kate isn’t certain that she’s not that, either.
Ollie sits still, listening to this, and for a while afterwards. Then he makes a sound that’s halfway between a cackle and a groan, but he doesn’t follow it up with anything other than a perfectly even-voiced and reasonable, “Who knows. It’s not a simple thing to give up the coping mechanisms we stumble onto when we’re young. But you’ll both do what you think is right, in the end.”
Kate shifts upwards a little so she can give Ollie a skeptical lifted brow. “I don’t want to do ‘what I think is right’ if it hurts people I care about,” she says, and rests her forehead against his.
But it’s clear the moment has passed, the closeness, and Ollie shifts away from the contact, glancing over at the clock. “All right,” he says. “Well, whatever you both think is /best/, then, or correct or necessary. Whichever way you’d prefer to define it. Maybe Bruce would know.”
"I’m not talking to Bruce right now, am I," says Kate, and her brow furrows further. Ollie’s doing this detached shit for his own self-preservation, she knows, and she can’t deny him that—but she can’t deny that it’s like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on her, suddenly, or the hot water running out in the shower. Not quite a slap, but something almost-painful and causing indignance.
"That’s because Bruce isn’t as available as I am," Ollie says snappishly, then immediately sighs, digging the heel of his hand into the side of his neck. "Look, I’m just trying to be realistic with what I can expect, okay? That’s all. I don’t wanna get into it right now and make a whole big Thing out of it." He eases to one side of the chair, letting her slide a bit off his lap, and says with a tighness to his throat, "Just leave it alone, Kate. It’ll be better in the long run for all of us."
"Is that what you really want?" asks Kate, who explicitly is not pointing out that Ollie came to see her, after all. She adds, "I’m not. Going to get into it right now. But I don’t think I should leave it alone permanently, or dance around it."
"Sure. Fine."
Ollie extricates himself from the chair, going to the kitchen and getting himself a glass of water, which he just kind of holds for a while by the sink before putting it down. “The important thing right now isn’t what I want. It’s making sure that you and Bruce are all right.” He turns to look at her, agitation pulling the corners of his mouth down. “And I’m not saying that to be dramatic or any of that teenage martyr shit. I mean it, because neither of you is in any state of mind to treat me with any fucking kindness or benefit of the doubt right now, so yeah, that’s what I really want, Kate.”
Kate weighs the potential consequences of querying where ‘any fucking kindness’ came from, because she’s still not entirely sure where, besides what they’ve already discussed, she’s slighted Ollie—versus potential emotional nuclear meltdown. Considering they have to go play happy couple the next day in what could very well turn out to be a trap…she settles for sitting back, hurt, and chewing her lip. “I don’t agree that that’s the most important thing,” she says softly, but rubs her forehead, her sinuses aching a little yet from the remnants of the cold and from the close, greasy, smoky Gotham air that lingers at this time of year. “Ow,” she murmurs, wincing at a slight stab of pain, like a shard of glass in her forehead.
Picking up the glass of water, Ollie goes back into the living room and sets it down on the table next to Kate. “I can get you some ibuprofen,” he offers. Then he says, “…look. It’s messy, the whole situation, what’s been going on between us. Between you and me. I dunno if you’ve noticed how things have changed, but I have, Kate. And I don’t want to bring it up now, when you’re walking on knives and —”
He stops, shaking his head. “So it’s gotta be the most important thing, getting you and Bruce through this. For us to maybe have a chance to work it out once it’s all over. Do you understand?” Ollie watches her carefully, even though deep inside, he’s not sure if he wants her to agree, or to insist that they talk it out. The thought of either one makes his blood run cold, clogs his throat.
"It’s okay," Kate murmurs, to the offer, but then… "Of course I’ve noticed," she says, eyes opening, gaze hurt, to look at Ollie, and her brow furrows as she goes through ten different things she wants to say, none of them right. In the end, she says, "I want to work it out. I want to talk about it. But I don’t know how, right now. It’s like anything I do, it hurts you or it hurts Bruce or it hurts you both, and I’m so scared of losing everything right now that I run on autopilot, which keeps hurting people almost as much. I’ve lost so much energy to being scared and to fighting that I don’t have anything left for being me, the me that wants to work everything out and try to fix things, more than anything else." She pauses, realizing she’s been blurting, and says, softly, "Not to make excuses, or to force anyone’s hand. Just so you know where I’m at, that’s all."
Ollie feels a surge of relief wash through him as he listens to Kate talk, and he sinks down into a crouch so he can take one of her thin hands, warm it between his own. “Thank you,” he says, fully and sincerely. “It’s been so fucking long since I’ve felt like you were talking to me like we used to, Kate, like /partners/, instead of like you’re my … my handler, or my PR person, constantly on the ready to clean up whatever mess I’m inevitably gonna make.”
He adds, “And I’m not trying to make excuses or force your hand, either, and I know I can be reckless and headstrong and make decisions on the spur of the moment without consulting anybody. I know my flaws. It just seems like lately, that’s all that /you/ remember about me, too.”
Taking her other hand, Ollie curls his fingers with hers, saying earnestly, “I’m not saying I haven’t changed. I’m sure I have. But it kills me, Kate, when I tell you I feel as if you don’t even like me anymore and the only response you’ve got is that you don’t like anything right now. I’m not a /thing/, I’m your /husband/.”
Kate bites her lip, curls her fingers into Ollie’s palm a little, and she looks for a moment like she’s going to burst into tears, but instead she snuffles softly and bites her lip once more. “It’s been bad,” she agrees, voice quiet. “God, Ollie, it’s…that video, it made everything come back, made me dodge anyone who was angry, be nice and quiet like a little mouse and try to make everything just keep flowing along so nothing bad happened, like I could will it all to be okay. But it didn’t even work when I tried it when I was a kid…”
Ollie squeezes her hands, then stands up — the hunkered-down position is too strenuous, after a night spent chasing fruitlessly after the Joker — and puts her hands gently back into her lap. “Coping patterns we learn when we’re little,” he circles round again. “I know it’s hard, and harder still when you’re compromised like this, but you gotta keep talking to us, Kate. Keep telling us what’s going on for you. Otherwise it’ll all get worse.”
The crux of the matter isn’t the video, not in Ollie’s estimation of how long he’s been feeling like this, but she’s right in saying that it exacerbated the entire thing. Just the way that the destruction of Wayne Manor has. “We still have a lot more to talk about, but this is good for now,” he says, rubbing his back. “We have too much work to do to get into it.”
"Yeah," Kate says, and pushes up from her chair anyway, reaching out to put her hand on Ollie’s shoulder. "More. Soon. But right now…I think you might be the one who needs the ibuprofen," she says quietly, fingers lingering before she heads to the cupboard to get out the bottle of Advil. It’s what she can do, right now, to take care of him. Even just a little.
K TXT: because he hasn’t, at least not with regards to a psychotic break
K TXT: I mean, the usual ptsd, anxiety, and assorted neuroses still apply but
Ollie reads the texts and doesn’t answer them; instead he takes himself to the Gotham condo to talk to Kate face-to-face. “Hey,” he says when he lets himself in from the zeta pad, and not much more than that before, “I don’t know. Unless it’s something the Joker said to him.”
Kate looks up from her phone, slightly surprised to see Ollie, but only just. She’s got the modern equivalent of piles of paper and newspaper clippings and photographs scattered around her—all of this in a holoscreen version instead, linked back to the Watchtower mainframe. “Now that would make sense,” she says, brushing her hair back over her ear.
"I dunno what exactly the Joker said, though." Ollie sits down across from her, arms along the armrests of the chair, legs sprawled out. He sinks his chin down against his chest, the broody posture he keeps falling into lately. "I didn’t catch the guts of it."
"Probably all for the best," says Kate, and she flicks away the clutter with a wave of one hand, a flick of the wrist, turning on the barstool she’s sitting on to face him. "Listening to him’s never good for anyone’s head." She eyes his posture a little, brow slightly raised.
"Especially not Bruce’s." He thinks about that for a few moments, and then almost reluctantly amends, "—for Batman’s."
Kate considers this, then says, after her own analysis, “For either. But especially not Batman’s.” It was easier to deconstruct Bruce’s feelings. Batman was close to a goddamn brick wall.
"I don’t … /know/ anything about this. The Joker. Jason Tood. Arkham Asylum." Ollie looks over at Kate, fingers skittling on the armrests of his chair. "Knowing him as long as I have gives me no insight into this, Kate. I’m as much at a defecit when it comes to helping Batman with the Joker as I am at helping you with Walter Pratt." His fingers dig into the fabric, short nails still catching the fibres with a shrrring noise.
The digging does sort of give Ollie away, combined with what he’s actually saying, and Kate slips off her chair, pads over to him on bare feet, and perches on one armrest. “You’re a better help than you think,” she notes quietly. “Speaking of, it’s pretty clear Walter thinks you’re a threat.”
Ollie lifts his arm to drape it lightly over Kate’s hip, hand hovering over her belly. “Guess that’s something to be glad of,” he grunts. “Better than him thinking he can get to you through me or anything like that. Last thing you need is Dear Old fixating on the people in your life who’re /actually/ vulnerable.”
Kate’s about to respond before she actually thinks about what Ollie meant, and she shivers, leaning into him a little. “He hurt Peter more than he had to, more than just toying with him. Back in LA. I have no idea why.”
"Because he’s a sadistic fuck and gets off on hurting whoever he can," Ollie says, a bit more viciously than he intends to. He reflexively curls his hand in against Kate’s stomach, like some big paw pulling her closer in to him. "He did it for the sheer pleasure of hurting Peter and the bonus pleasure of hurting /you/. Because he hates you the most, Kate."
"I still don’t get why he bothers hating me so damn much anyway." Kate shifts, leans her head lightly (in case he doesn’t want it there) on Ollie’s shoulder. It’s the closest thing she can bring herself to do to what she wants (which is to cling and shiver).
Ollie shifts his shoulder under the pressure of Kate’s head, creating a space for her, although he doesn’t do what he normally would and pull her into his lap. Instead they stay perched and poised, tense but needing the physical contact, and he says, “He thought you were his to do what he wanted with. You and your mom, you were both his property and he could beat you when he wanted, kill you if he wanted. That’s why he tried to show you that he even owned your family, Peter and Ramsey, if he wanted them.”
He presses his fingertips into the flesh of her belly, one of the few places that Kate’s body has the telling softness of having carried a baby, of being a woman who’s lived her thirty-some-odd years. “But you ripped that out from under him, Kate, threw him ass over fucking teakettle and took away what he thought his power was. So he’ll never forgive you for that.”
While what Ollie says is something that Kate knows, has always known deep down, his stating it is like exposing something raw and rotten to the open air and sunlight that has been hidden away because it’s too awful to really think about. She makes a pained little sound choked back behind closed lips, and automatically turns her head to bury her face into Ollie’s shoulder, hard, even if she doesn’t shift down to curl up against him as she usually might, and she’s not crying.
After a moment or two, she says, softly, into the fabric, “Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to have a real dad,” before she clears her throat, straightens a little into Ollie’s hands, lets the rest of the thought shiver into the tension of her muscles and furrow of her brow. “It’s why it’s got to be me who stops him again, O.”
"You’re right." Ollie nods, bearded chin rubbing into Kate’s hair as he unconsciously tightens his arm around her to compensate for her shift in posture. "You have to do it. The same way if it ever comes down to that with the Joker, Bruce would have to be the one." He looks at her, gnawing on the inside of his bottom lip. "You’re the one he’s hurt the most. You have to be the one to end it all."
"It wouldn’t be over otherwise." Kate draws her face out of Ollie’s shoulder, turns so she rests her head there instead. "Maybe that’s why it’s never over for Bruce."
"With Bruce, I think, it’s…" Ollie rests his head against Kate’s. "Sometimes I feel like he’s simultaneously more emotionally stable than people give him credit for, and more emotionally stunted than anybody realizes, y’know?"
"Honestly, that’s exactly the conclusion I’ve come to myself." Kate puts her arm gently around Ollie’s shoulders, to balance herself as she’s sort of sliding against his side. "It’s what makes him him."
With this, Ollie finally gives up on trying to maintain some kind of hurt-proof cushion of space between them and scoops Kate in his arm, down against him in the chair. “And playing everything close to the vest while placing a premium on details and forthrightness is what makes you you,” he says. “But there’s a lot about both of your methods that can be pretty damn rough on the people who love you.” He swallows, and adds in a rougher voice, “—flawed as we are.”
"That’s the thing, Ollie…we’re all flawed. Me included. Me especially included." Kate hesitates for half a second, then nuzzles into Ollie, arm wrapping tighter around him, and the warm solidness of someone against her—not even sex, just being close to him—is something that’s like a warm bath or a just-right cup of coffee. "Otherwise it’d be damn creepy," she adds. "If any of us weren’t."
"Then why is it you both act like—"
He brings himself up short, snapping his lips shut on the words with a loud exhalation through his nose. “Anyhow,” Ollie says. “When you put Walt away this time, it’s gonna take. There’s no reason for it not to. You’ve gotten better at being Manhunter since the last time you faced him, Kate, and I’m betting he won’t expect that, will keep right on thinking that you’re a scared little girl deep inside who he can get on the run and break down mentally. But he’s wrong, and he’s gonna end up on the wrong side of this fight.”
"Like we’re right in being flawed?" Kate isn’t upset by this, states it straight out, quietly. "Because it’s been hard learning to process things in better ways, and it’s human nature to cling to Being Right, because the old thing seems like it should be right, because it’s easy and we know how to do it." She sighs, closes her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what my head would be like if it weren’t full of cognitive dissonance." For some reason, this is easier to talk about than not being a scared little girl. Probably because Kate isn’t certain that she’s not that, either.
Ollie sits still, listening to this, and for a while afterwards. Then he makes a sound that’s halfway between a cackle and a groan, but he doesn’t follow it up with anything other than a perfectly even-voiced and reasonable, “Who knows. It’s not a simple thing to give up the coping mechanisms we stumble onto when we’re young. But you’ll both do what you think is right, in the end.”
Kate shifts upwards a little so she can give Ollie a skeptical lifted brow. “I don’t want to do ‘what I think is right’ if it hurts people I care about,” she says, and rests her forehead against his.
But it’s clear the moment has passed, the closeness, and Ollie shifts away from the contact, glancing over at the clock. “All right,” he says. “Well, whatever you both think is /best/, then, or correct or necessary. Whichever way you’d prefer to define it. Maybe Bruce would know.”
"I’m not talking to Bruce right now, am I," says Kate, and her brow furrows further. Ollie’s doing this detached shit for his own self-preservation, she knows, and she can’t deny him that—but she can’t deny that it’s like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on her, suddenly, or the hot water running out in the shower. Not quite a slap, but something almost-painful and causing indignance.
"That’s because Bruce isn’t as available as I am," Ollie says snappishly, then immediately sighs, digging the heel of his hand into the side of his neck. "Look, I’m just trying to be realistic with what I can expect, okay? That’s all. I don’t wanna get into it right now and make a whole big Thing out of it." He eases to one side of the chair, letting her slide a bit off his lap, and says with a tighness to his throat, "Just leave it alone, Kate. It’ll be better in the long run for all of us."
"Is that what you really want?" asks Kate, who explicitly is not pointing out that Ollie came to see her, after all. She adds, "I’m not. Going to get into it right now. But I don’t think I should leave it alone permanently, or dance around it."
"Sure. Fine."
Ollie extricates himself from the chair, going to the kitchen and getting himself a glass of water, which he just kind of holds for a while by the sink before putting it down. “The important thing right now isn’t what I want. It’s making sure that you and Bruce are all right.” He turns to look at her, agitation pulling the corners of his mouth down. “And I’m not saying that to be dramatic or any of that teenage martyr shit. I mean it, because neither of you is in any state of mind to treat me with any fucking kindness or benefit of the doubt right now, so yeah, that’s what I really want, Kate.”
Kate weighs the potential consequences of querying where ‘any fucking kindness’ came from, because she’s still not entirely sure where, besides what they’ve already discussed, she’s slighted Ollie—versus potential emotional nuclear meltdown. Considering they have to go play happy couple the next day in what could very well turn out to be a trap…she settles for sitting back, hurt, and chewing her lip. “I don’t agree that that’s the most important thing,” she says softly, but rubs her forehead, her sinuses aching a little yet from the remnants of the cold and from the close, greasy, smoky Gotham air that lingers at this time of year. “Ow,” she murmurs, wincing at a slight stab of pain, like a shard of glass in her forehead.
Picking up the glass of water, Ollie goes back into the living room and sets it down on the table next to Kate. “I can get you some ibuprofen,” he offers. Then he says, “…look. It’s messy, the whole situation, what’s been going on between us. Between you and me. I dunno if you’ve noticed how things have changed, but I have, Kate. And I don’t want to bring it up now, when you’re walking on knives and —”
He stops, shaking his head. “So it’s gotta be the most important thing, getting you and Bruce through this. For us to maybe have a chance to work it out once it’s all over. Do you understand?” Ollie watches her carefully, even though deep inside, he’s not sure if he wants her to agree, or to insist that they talk it out. The thought of either one makes his blood run cold, clogs his throat.
"It’s okay," Kate murmurs, to the offer, but then… "Of course I’ve noticed," she says, eyes opening, gaze hurt, to look at Ollie, and her brow furrows as she goes through ten different things she wants to say, none of them right. In the end, she says, "I want to work it out. I want to talk about it. But I don’t know how, right now. It’s like anything I do, it hurts you or it hurts Bruce or it hurts you both, and I’m so scared of losing everything right now that I run on autopilot, which keeps hurting people almost as much. I’ve lost so much energy to being scared and to fighting that I don’t have anything left for being me, the me that wants to work everything out and try to fix things, more than anything else." She pauses, realizing she’s been blurting, and says, softly, "Not to make excuses, or to force anyone’s hand. Just so you know where I’m at, that’s all."
Ollie feels a surge of relief wash through him as he listens to Kate talk, and he sinks down into a crouch so he can take one of her thin hands, warm it between his own. “Thank you,” he says, fully and sincerely. “It’s been so fucking long since I’ve felt like you were talking to me like we used to, Kate, like /partners/, instead of like you’re my … my handler, or my PR person, constantly on the ready to clean up whatever mess I’m inevitably gonna make.”
He adds, “And I’m not trying to make excuses or force your hand, either, and I know I can be reckless and headstrong and make decisions on the spur of the moment without consulting anybody. I know my flaws. It just seems like lately, that’s all that /you/ remember about me, too.”
Taking her other hand, Ollie curls his fingers with hers, saying earnestly, “I’m not saying I haven’t changed. I’m sure I have. But it kills me, Kate, when I tell you I feel as if you don’t even like me anymore and the only response you’ve got is that you don’t like anything right now. I’m not a /thing/, I’m your /husband/.”
Kate bites her lip, curls her fingers into Ollie’s palm a little, and she looks for a moment like she’s going to burst into tears, but instead she snuffles softly and bites her lip once more. “It’s been bad,” she agrees, voice quiet. “God, Ollie, it’s…that video, it made everything come back, made me dodge anyone who was angry, be nice and quiet like a little mouse and try to make everything just keep flowing along so nothing bad happened, like I could will it all to be okay. But it didn’t even work when I tried it when I was a kid…”
Ollie squeezes her hands, then stands up — the hunkered-down position is too strenuous, after a night spent chasing fruitlessly after the Joker — and puts her hands gently back into her lap. “Coping patterns we learn when we’re little,” he circles round again. “I know it’s hard, and harder still when you’re compromised like this, but you gotta keep talking to us, Kate. Keep telling us what’s going on for you. Otherwise it’ll all get worse.”
The crux of the matter isn’t the video, not in Ollie’s estimation of how long he’s been feeling like this, but she’s right in saying that it exacerbated the entire thing. Just the way that the destruction of Wayne Manor has. “We still have a lot more to talk about, but this is good for now,” he says, rubbing his back. “We have too much work to do to get into it.”
"Yeah," Kate says, and pushes up from her chair anyway, reaching out to put her hand on Ollie’s shoulder. "More. Soon. But right now…I think you might be the one who needs the ibuprofen," she says quietly, fingers lingering before she heads to the cupboard to get out the bottle of Advil. It’s what she can do, right now, to take care of him. Even just a little.