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thejusticelounge2015-01-01 09:01 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2015-01-01 09:01 pm
Entry tags:
and we banish shade
Kate is composing an epic screed regarding how ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ should be banned from any and all airplay.
Ollie glances over her shoulder. “They made a new version, y’know. Took out all the nonsense about no rain in Africa and all that. Band Aid 30, or something.” He sits down, sprawling his legs out, and rocks his feet back and forth on the heels. “Where d’you send these things, anyhow? You got a blog or something?”
"They made it for Ebola and ended up making the song even worse," Kate says, pen between her teeth—she’s typing, but she has a pen, and no, that doesn’t have to make any sense. She types NEOCOLONIALIST BULLSHIT in all caps, then scowls at the screen before turning back to Ollie. "Uh…I might…uh…have a blog. That isn’t a Kate Spencer blog. If you catch my drift."
"Cool." He waggles his feet some more, hands folded on his stomach. "What’s the blog called?"
Kate looks completely and utterly sheepish, face heating up, and mutters something.
Ollie bobs forward a little, ducking his head. “What’s that? I didn’t quite catch it.”
"Earned Disillusionment," says Kate, looking down at her fingers on the keyboard, mortified. "It’s, uh, an Ani reference. Because I am secretly nineteen or something and…I don’t know, I needed an outlet?" Not everyone could be as publicly outspoken as Oliver Queen, for a start.
Ollie raises a slow eyebrow. “Woooooooowwwww,” he drawls. “That’s really … actually it’s a great fake name for your blog, come to think of it. Nobody would be able to guess it belongs to a woman nearing forty instead of a fourteen year old with the solutions to all the world’s problems.”
"I have a lot of followers," Kate says, feeling oddly defensive. She is irritated with herself when she realizes she’s pouting, for fuck’s sake. “Look, I didn’t get a chance to do that as a teenager, so…”
Ollie holds up his hands. “Fine, fine,” he relents, sitting back again. “Heaven forfend I prevent you from working out your teenaged issues in cyberspace. Especially since you have a /lot/ of fellow disillusioned, earned or otherwise.”
"I’ve hidden my tracks a lot better than a teenager would have." Most teenagers don’t have access to the Bat-archive when it comes to covering up their internet activity, for a start. Kate pauses, then closes her laptop and scrubs her face with her hands. "Ugh, what am I even saying? It’s fucking stupid."
Ollie makes a sound in his throat. “What? What’s stupid? You seem like you put a lot of effort into it.” He adds, unable to resist, “…and you have so many followers, after all.”
"I don’t put that much effort into it. Not compared, to say, an amicus brief," Kate replies from where she’s got her face in her hands. "Shit, maybe I’m regressing." She doesn’t expand upon the reasoning behind that thought, though—her parents, namely.
Ollie is quiet after this statement, sitting up straighter, stretching his legs out again, basically rustling around restlessly. “I don’t know if you mean that or if you’re just saying stuff,” he says after a while, plainly.
Kate looks up with one arching eyebrow. “What do you mean, just saying stuff?” she asks, perhaps a little defensively.
Ollie looks at her for a long time, the hinges of his jaw working. Finally he looks down again, feet starting to do their rocking thing. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”
Kate looks back at him, eyes narrowing a little. “Nuh-uh,” she says, nose wrinkling up. “Tell me.”
"Why should I?" Ollie doesn’t say this in a confrontational way; he asks with that same plain tone and a lack of his usual up-and-down intonations. "You tell me."
"How am I supposed to know what you mean if you don’t tell me?" asks Kate. "What it sounds like is ‘Kate, you just say things about yourself but don’t actually mean to unpack them’." Kate pauses, because that’s fairly accurate to her MO, actually.
Ollie gives a long, significant shrug.
"But I don’t even know if you want me to unpack them," Kate continues, "because then I’m a goddamn mess and don’t do anything to fix it, which just makes shit worse, so…" This is, to be honest, emotionally on the level of her Not-A-Teenager blogging. ”But if I don’t unpack them it gets worse anyway and I need a fucking drink,” she concludes.
Ollie puts his linked hands on the table, shoulders rounding as he slumps forward and rests his weight on his forearms. “So it sounds like you got it all figured out, Kate,” he remarks. “I dunno what you need me for.”
Kate levels a narrow-eyed look at him. “All figured out doesn’t mean shit if I don’t carry through,” she points out.
Ollie nods. “That’s very true.”
Kate ”And I’m really fucking bad at carrying through.”
Ollie presses his lips together and scrunches his mouth to the side. “Also true.”
"And you’re sick and tired of trying to make me do it. I get that."
Ollie squints and tilts his head, putting his hands flat, palm-down on the table. “Is that it? Are you sure?”
"Because you keep trying and putting in an effort and then I don’t budge. I’d be fed up." Kate pauses for a second, inhales raggedly, and slurps cold coffee through her teeth. ”Part of it…most of it…is that I don’t know what good it’ll do. All the crying and the railing and the anger isn’t going to fix my parents. My parents, who, even in death, are still so very utterly fucked up, and Mama, I say that with the utmost love and respect—” Kate gestures ceilingwards.
"I’m not fed up about that." Ollie blows out a harsh stream of breath, the sound of it whistling through his teeth and lips. "Look. I’m not — I’m not some kind of saint, but I’m not the type of guy who makes a promise to stand by the woman he loves and then gives up out of frustration. All of what you said — the parts about yourself — they’re true. And I’m glad you’re realizing it and saying it out loud." He lifts a shoulder, drops it. "I just don’t know what purpose I serve in this. If it’s for being a sounding board for you working out your thoughts about your parents, I’m sure there’s other people who’re better suited for it than I am."
Kate looks back at him from where she’s been looking upwards, and her face is utterly open. “No,” she says softly. “I don’t think there is. Not anyone who knows where I’ve been and the places in my head. Not anyone who’ll tell me when I’m being stupid and explain why. I don’t know anyone better than you.”
Ollie returns her look, his face a bit drawn, although that could be the uncharacteristic solemnity of it. “What about me,” he says, and clenches down his jaw again, that muscle at the corner jumping. “What about the places in my head. What about when /I/ need somebody to give enough of a shit to ask me about where I’ve been, or to take my side in an argument. What about that, Kate.”
"I don’t know what you expect me to do at this point," Kate replies, her own teeth gritting together at the back of her mouth. "When you keep saying that, and I’ve hurt you but god help me if I can tease out exactly where and how, because I’m supposed to know, but because I don’t understand all I can do is swear not to do it again. Which means precisely dick if I don’t understand what I missed.”
Ollie lifts his hands long enough to smack them down against the table, his elbows bowing out as he rises a bit from his chair. “Then figure it out!” he says, voice ragged. “How hard is it? When Shado was here you didn’t ask me how I was handling it, you were so busy trying to prove to everybody that you weren’t rattled by her. Who cares what everybody else thought? Who gives a fuck? You /know/ what she did to me and it’s just — it was all indifference or lectures, Kate! You /lectured/ me about how to talk to Tak instead of supporting me.” He stands up, pushing his hands through his hair. “I fucking /killed/ her and you’ve barely asked me about it. And you want to know what you missed.”
Kate sits there, for a moment, though she startles at the sound of Ollie’s hands hitting the table, and she draws in on herself—out of shame more than anything else at all. “I misread it all,” she says, quietly, simply. “I thought…I thought you wanted to handle it yourself. That you didn’t want to talk about any of it again. And I fucked that up, I’m sorry.”
"You were still mad at me. Both of you. Over Talia. Of course I couldn’t come open up to you and beg for your help, even though that’s what I ended up doing." He gestures, a little wildly. "How would I handle it myself? Shado /living in my home/. Why would you think I wanted to handle that myself. I don’t understand, I don’t understand."
"I thought you were trying to prove something," says Kate, voice small, quiet. "That you wanted to prove to us that you could do this all your damn self, that she couldn’t hurt you anymore. That’s what I thought and I was goddamn wrong—and then she was dead and what the hell do I say with regards to that when I don’t even know what was going on, which was my own damn fault too?"
Ollie drops heavily back into his chair. “She hurt me plenty,” he says dully. “It hurt worse to think you didn’t care.” Ollie looks up, at Kate, slightly past her. “I dunno what you can say. It’s too late for anything now.”
Kate stares out into the room, into the middle distance. “So what,” she says, and her voice cracks a little. “Do you want me to leave?”
Ollie’s mouth works a few times, like he’s gathering saliva to talk. When he opens it, though, it’s to shift his bottom row of teeth against the top, the slight scrape of bone loud in the quiet room. “No,” Ollie says unsteadily. “But I don’t know why you want to stay.”
”Because I love you,” Kate replies, and her voice properly cracks this time. “And I do care, and if I can’t fix what I’ve fucked up, then at least I can show you those things now.”
"/Do/ you love me?" Ollie sucks his bottom lip in, shifting to stretch one leg out. "It doesn’t feel like it. I haven’t felt like …" He sighs, suddenly, harshly. "Having an open relationship was the worst fucking decision we ever made, you know that?"
"Yes, I love you," Kate says, "it wouldn’t fucking hurt like this if I didn’t. I wouldn’t feel like such a shit." She presses her fingertips to her forehead, purses her lips, then says, simply, in response to his last comment, "Do you think so?"
Ollie blinks a few times, assessing. “I’m not trying to make you feel like shit,” he says eventually.
"I know you aren’t. But I’m not going to just not feel bad about my own massive fuckup regarding my husband, who I owe more than that. I’m not going to wallow in it, it’s not going to do any good, but yes, I feel like shit about it."
"What do /you/ think," Ollie says instead, circling back around to push Kate’s own question back at her. "Tell me."
"What do I think about our relationship? I don’t think it was the worst decision we ever made. But I also know there’s far more I could do, could have done, to make things seem less skewed."
Ollie sits up a little. “You know I’m not talking about Bruce,” he says. “Because Bruce loves me. And more than that, he always /liked/ me. It’s not Bruce.” Ollie makes a face, as if something bitter has come up in the back of his throat. And maybe it has.
"Then what is it?" Kate asks. "Is it me?"
Ollie swallows. “Yeah, in a way, I guess,” he admits. “I mean, it was a while ago, but. When we decided to have an open relationship I didn’t realize it would be with somebody who actively /loathed/ me.” He spreads his hands, palms turned up as he keeps talking, not meeting Kate’s eyes as a faintly anxious-but-trying-to-cover-it tone seeps through his voice. “I mean it was a while ago. But when you started taking Bruce’s side on everything and just scolding me all the time even if I hadn’t /done/ anything, it just … reminded me of it all. So I started to think maybe it was /me/.”
Kate can feel her teeth gritting at the back of her mouth as she realizes where and how she’s screwed up here, the accompanying pain in her jaw. “I…” she starts, brow furrowing. “I just…it was stupid of me, Ollie. It was all from back…back THERE, and what happened after it, last year, and trying to make everything run perfect because I was still scared of spooking Bruce.” Kate clarifies, and her brow’s furrowed so deep you could plant next year’s crop there, “And doing that made things bad instead, fucked everything up.”
"You mean in Cachement. With the … whatever they were, with them forcibly impregnating you. The demon baby." Ollie’s beyond speaking in euphemism right now, and the words come out plain and unvarnished. "And Bruce leaving us when we got back. Is that what you mean?"
"Yeah. I wanted…I wanted it so ‘everything was beautiful and nothing hurt’," says Kate, quoting Vonnegut. "And it was stupid."
Ollie presses the heels of his hands against his eyebrows. “The sentiment isn’t stupid,” he murmurs. “Sacrificing me to try and make it happen was the part that didn’t work. Not for me, anyhow.”
"It didn’t work for me either," Kate retorts. "Seeing as I’m losing you and it’s my own goddamn fault. You weren’t the one who I should have been trying to fix and nagging at, Ollie."
Ollie is quiet for a while after this. “I guess that’s as good a place as any to pinpoint it to,” he decides. “Cachement. That’s good. Gives us a place to work from.”
Kate looks over at him, face drawn and a little haggard. “I’m sorry, Ollie,” she says. “For what little it’s worth. I wanted everything to be okay for once and it turned out that how I thought I’d get there was entirely and utterly wrong. That I’m entirely wrong.”
Ollie shifts, uncomfortable. “I didn’t say you were entirely wrong,” he begins, mouth pinched. “That’s not what I meant, Kate. This isn’t all or nothing. I’m not trying to make you feel like a villain. I’m just … I dunno. Sad.”
"I was wrong to make you feel like I did," Kate replies. "Like I didn’t care about you or about us. I’m sad too."
Ollie rustles around in his seat. “Okay,” he says, slightly rushed. “Okay. It’s all right. I—” Ollie takes a breath, eyebrows furrowing a bit. “What happened in Cachement. You haven’t talked about it enough, Kate. Did you ever talk to Bruce about it? After you and me talked about it that time? Because I really think that would help, y’know, being able to discuss it with him, since Bruce gets so affected by babies and pregnancy and stuff like that and I mean, I know you had a miscarriage already and the thing in Cachement, that was awful, and I feel like you haven’t had enough of a chance to work through it—”
"It’s not all right," Kate protests gently—they might be able to make it all right, but it’s not all right yet and she doesn’t want him to dismiss it entirely—but the way Ollie’s talking means she’s not able to dodge the other questions and the statements and deep down she doesn’t want to. "I…no. Not really. Everything went to shit and there wasn’t time, and now…" She squeezes her eyes shut. "That’s maybe what got me about Mama."
"Whaddyou mean? Seeing your mom made you think about that part of it? Carrying babies?" Ollie sits forward a little, reaching out for Kate’s hand. "Tell me. I’m not gonna get there on my own, Katie."
”She saved me in Cachement. And she saved me in Gotham. And she saved me when I was small, christ, how many times could Walter have…” Kate shakes her head. “I couldn’t even protect my son when there wasn’t even a direct threat against him, Ollie, how shit am I as a parent? I don’t deserve to ever try again even if the circumstances were right.” Kate mutters, “No wonder I was trying to make everything else perfect, seeing as I’m the element that’s always fucked.”
Ollie curls his fingers around hers. “That’s not true,” he says. “None of us would say that. Ramsey’s come out the other side fine, and even if you were a little overwhelmed for a while, that’s why you’ve got partners. That’s why you’ve got friends who’re willing to step in. It, y’know, takes a village, right? And it doesn’t make you any lesser as a parent. You’ve been there for him when he needed you most.” He wrinkles his nose when Kate mutters. “And that’s not true either. I wouldn’t say that and I /know/ Bruce wouldn’t. You think we haven’t both felt that way too? That we were the fuckups? It’s not the truth for any of us.” It takes some effort for Ollie to say that — not on Bruce’s account, or Kate’s, but his own. “I’ve screwed up so many things, Kate, but not this. None of us have.”
Kate doesn’t answer the part about Ramsey—that’s deep-seated and a long way from ever going. “It feels like I’ve fucked this up,” she says instead. “Fucked up you and me, that part of it anyway.”
Ollie stops squeezing her hand, seeming to realize with a start how hard he was pressing into her wrist-bones. “No,” he shakes his head. “I’m hurt, and I’m confused, but I don’t think we’re fucked up for good. Not if we’re in a mind to fix things. Not if we really mean it.” Ollie twists his mouth around a bit as he thinks. “I don’t expect you to be a saint,” he says suddenly. “Even if that’s what your mom seemed like. That’s what moms are /supposed/ to seem like, especially if they died while you were still a kid. I’m not holding you to that standard. And if you and me and Bruce had a baby, you would be a wonderful parent, you both would.”
Kate reaches out to keep Ollie’s hand there—she doesn’t want him to go away. “I do really mean it,” she says. “I also really mean it about…about being a fuckup, as a mom. I don’t even know why I want—” She cuts herself off. “You’d be damn wonderful as well,” she says, because that’s also true and she can trust herself to say that rather than any of the rest of this messed up train of thought.
"I don’t want to be one," Ollie says shortly, and makes a frustrated, dismissive sound even as he reaches for Kate’s hand again. He pushes his thumb along her palm, cupping her hand in his. "Why /do/ you want a baby with us?" he asks, carefully, not wanting it to sound like an accusation or something aggressive. "Maybe it’s cathartic to think about? If you feel like you screwed up with Ramsey. Maybe it’d feel like a second chance?"
"I know," Kate says, and Ollie’s first comment does far more to cut in than any of his other questions, it’s all she can do to keep from flinching, but she manages. "I…because you’re the best men I know, that’s why, and I want to build things, make things, with you both. That’s why.”
"A /baby/, though," Ollie presses, peering at Kate intently. "That’s not the same level as us all being a business entity together, or getting married, or building a home together. That’s a /new life/ and … I dunno. Considering the amount of issues when it comes to kids among the three of us, I just. I guess I don’t get it." He divots his bottom lip with his teeth. "It was a nice fantasy for a while. But I never wanted it the way you two do. I don’t understand it."
And that’s why she doesn’t talk about Cachement and what happened there. Part of it is Bruce, sure. But a good deal of it is because she knows what her want caused there and knows that Ollie doesn’t, can’t, shouldn’t have to think about her wanting that, or worry about it. ”I don’t know,” says Kate. “If it’s not that, then I just don’t know. Maybe it’s hormones or something, or my body going into shit, shit, biological clock mode. I can’t explain.”
Ollie considers this, nods. “All right,” he says. “If that’s what it is. But that doesn’t mean I think you should ignore it all. Clearly it means something to /you/, and you should be able to work through it with somebody, okay? That’s important. The way these things scratch at your insides is important. I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have anybody to talk to.”
Kate nods a little and presses her forehead against his shoulder for a moment. “That goes for you, too, you know,” she points out. “You shouldn’t just…if there are things we need to talk about, we should talk about them, even if the timing is shitty.”
"Okay," Ollie says, easily enough, but his expression as Kate tips her head against his shoulder is more dubious. He circles back in the conversation to get away from the feeling, saying, "Getting out your feelings about your parents won’t help anything concrete, you’re right about that. But it’ll feel better, Kate. People need closure. There’s all kinds of things we don’t get to have an ending for and some of ‘em … we could really use it. I mean—" He reaches down and touches her chin, pulling back a little so he can look at her face," —you kinda got the ultimate chance at putting an ending on it, right? Not just your dad fucking things up again, but also you and your mom and grandma working together to set things right."
Kate frowns a little, looking back at Ollie, because his dodge has not gone unnoticed, even if she didn’t see the expression on his face. “A little,” she says. “I guess. I mean…I could do with reassurances that it’s all entirely over, that he’ll never hurt any of us again. But maybe that’s what Mama did, the best she could possibly, considering the circumstances.” She clears her throat, giving him a steady look. “Don’t just give me ‘okay’, though. Not when it’s been pretty obvious how fucked up I made stuff, and you don’t get to use my box of issues as an excuse.”
Ollie shrugs. “It’s not an excuse, it’s important,” he says. “And I mean ‘okay’. I don’t really have much else when it comes to that, not yet. We’ll see what happens. I hope it gets better, but it won’t be like it used to, and I want that to be all right. I want it to be a positive change. But I dunno if that’ll happen so right now, it’s ‘okay’.”
"It doesn’t have to be like it used to to be good," Kate says, and she truly believes that, wishes she could make him believe it—but in that case, it wouldn’t be good at all. "We’ll try. I’ll fucking try."
Ollie swallows, nodding. “You should really talk to him about Martha’s key,” he says, reaching out to touch the shape of it where it lies against her chest on its chain. “What it opens. What he gave you access to. I think that’ll —” Ollie takes a sharp breath, clasping Kate’s hand again. “I think it’ll do a lot to convince you that you’re a good mother. What Bruce thinks about you in that regard.”
Kate catches Ollie’s hand, holds it in hers, close to her chest. “Okay,” she says, and this is an okay that she means, too. “I will, I promise.”
Ollie glances over her shoulder. “They made a new version, y’know. Took out all the nonsense about no rain in Africa and all that. Band Aid 30, or something.” He sits down, sprawling his legs out, and rocks his feet back and forth on the heels. “Where d’you send these things, anyhow? You got a blog or something?”
"They made it for Ebola and ended up making the song even worse," Kate says, pen between her teeth—she’s typing, but she has a pen, and no, that doesn’t have to make any sense. She types NEOCOLONIALIST BULLSHIT in all caps, then scowls at the screen before turning back to Ollie. "Uh…I might…uh…have a blog. That isn’t a Kate Spencer blog. If you catch my drift."
"Cool." He waggles his feet some more, hands folded on his stomach. "What’s the blog called?"
Kate looks completely and utterly sheepish, face heating up, and mutters something.
Ollie bobs forward a little, ducking his head. “What’s that? I didn’t quite catch it.”
"Earned Disillusionment," says Kate, looking down at her fingers on the keyboard, mortified. "It’s, uh, an Ani reference. Because I am secretly nineteen or something and…I don’t know, I needed an outlet?" Not everyone could be as publicly outspoken as Oliver Queen, for a start.
Ollie raises a slow eyebrow. “Woooooooowwwww,” he drawls. “That’s really … actually it’s a great fake name for your blog, come to think of it. Nobody would be able to guess it belongs to a woman nearing forty instead of a fourteen year old with the solutions to all the world’s problems.”
"I have a lot of followers," Kate says, feeling oddly defensive. She is irritated with herself when she realizes she’s pouting, for fuck’s sake. “Look, I didn’t get a chance to do that as a teenager, so…”
Ollie holds up his hands. “Fine, fine,” he relents, sitting back again. “Heaven forfend I prevent you from working out your teenaged issues in cyberspace. Especially since you have a /lot/ of fellow disillusioned, earned or otherwise.”
"I’ve hidden my tracks a lot better than a teenager would have." Most teenagers don’t have access to the Bat-archive when it comes to covering up their internet activity, for a start. Kate pauses, then closes her laptop and scrubs her face with her hands. "Ugh, what am I even saying? It’s fucking stupid."
Ollie makes a sound in his throat. “What? What’s stupid? You seem like you put a lot of effort into it.” He adds, unable to resist, “…and you have so many followers, after all.”
"I don’t put that much effort into it. Not compared, to say, an amicus brief," Kate replies from where she’s got her face in her hands. "Shit, maybe I’m regressing." She doesn’t expand upon the reasoning behind that thought, though—her parents, namely.
Ollie is quiet after this statement, sitting up straighter, stretching his legs out again, basically rustling around restlessly. “I don’t know if you mean that or if you’re just saying stuff,” he says after a while, plainly.
Kate looks up with one arching eyebrow. “What do you mean, just saying stuff?” she asks, perhaps a little defensively.
Ollie looks at her for a long time, the hinges of his jaw working. Finally he looks down again, feet starting to do their rocking thing. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”
Kate looks back at him, eyes narrowing a little. “Nuh-uh,” she says, nose wrinkling up. “Tell me.”
"Why should I?" Ollie doesn’t say this in a confrontational way; he asks with that same plain tone and a lack of his usual up-and-down intonations. "You tell me."
"How am I supposed to know what you mean if you don’t tell me?" asks Kate. "What it sounds like is ‘Kate, you just say things about yourself but don’t actually mean to unpack them’." Kate pauses, because that’s fairly accurate to her MO, actually.
Ollie gives a long, significant shrug.
"But I don’t even know if you want me to unpack them," Kate continues, "because then I’m a goddamn mess and don’t do anything to fix it, which just makes shit worse, so…" This is, to be honest, emotionally on the level of her Not-A-Teenager blogging. ”But if I don’t unpack them it gets worse anyway and I need a fucking drink,” she concludes.
Ollie puts his linked hands on the table, shoulders rounding as he slumps forward and rests his weight on his forearms. “So it sounds like you got it all figured out, Kate,” he remarks. “I dunno what you need me for.”
Kate levels a narrow-eyed look at him. “All figured out doesn’t mean shit if I don’t carry through,” she points out.
Ollie nods. “That’s very true.”
Kate ”And I’m really fucking bad at carrying through.”
Ollie presses his lips together and scrunches his mouth to the side. “Also true.”
"And you’re sick and tired of trying to make me do it. I get that."
Ollie squints and tilts his head, putting his hands flat, palm-down on the table. “Is that it? Are you sure?”
"Because you keep trying and putting in an effort and then I don’t budge. I’d be fed up." Kate pauses for a second, inhales raggedly, and slurps cold coffee through her teeth. ”Part of it…most of it…is that I don’t know what good it’ll do. All the crying and the railing and the anger isn’t going to fix my parents. My parents, who, even in death, are still so very utterly fucked up, and Mama, I say that with the utmost love and respect—” Kate gestures ceilingwards.
"I’m not fed up about that." Ollie blows out a harsh stream of breath, the sound of it whistling through his teeth and lips. "Look. I’m not — I’m not some kind of saint, but I’m not the type of guy who makes a promise to stand by the woman he loves and then gives up out of frustration. All of what you said — the parts about yourself — they’re true. And I’m glad you’re realizing it and saying it out loud." He lifts a shoulder, drops it. "I just don’t know what purpose I serve in this. If it’s for being a sounding board for you working out your thoughts about your parents, I’m sure there’s other people who’re better suited for it than I am."
Kate looks back at him from where she’s been looking upwards, and her face is utterly open. “No,” she says softly. “I don’t think there is. Not anyone who knows where I’ve been and the places in my head. Not anyone who’ll tell me when I’m being stupid and explain why. I don’t know anyone better than you.”
Ollie returns her look, his face a bit drawn, although that could be the uncharacteristic solemnity of it. “What about me,” he says, and clenches down his jaw again, that muscle at the corner jumping. “What about the places in my head. What about when /I/ need somebody to give enough of a shit to ask me about where I’ve been, or to take my side in an argument. What about that, Kate.”
"I don’t know what you expect me to do at this point," Kate replies, her own teeth gritting together at the back of her mouth. "When you keep saying that, and I’ve hurt you but god help me if I can tease out exactly where and how, because I’m supposed to know, but because I don’t understand all I can do is swear not to do it again. Which means precisely dick if I don’t understand what I missed.”
Ollie lifts his hands long enough to smack them down against the table, his elbows bowing out as he rises a bit from his chair. “Then figure it out!” he says, voice ragged. “How hard is it? When Shado was here you didn’t ask me how I was handling it, you were so busy trying to prove to everybody that you weren’t rattled by her. Who cares what everybody else thought? Who gives a fuck? You /know/ what she did to me and it’s just — it was all indifference or lectures, Kate! You /lectured/ me about how to talk to Tak instead of supporting me.” He stands up, pushing his hands through his hair. “I fucking /killed/ her and you’ve barely asked me about it. And you want to know what you missed.”
Kate sits there, for a moment, though she startles at the sound of Ollie’s hands hitting the table, and she draws in on herself—out of shame more than anything else at all. “I misread it all,” she says, quietly, simply. “I thought…I thought you wanted to handle it yourself. That you didn’t want to talk about any of it again. And I fucked that up, I’m sorry.”
"You were still mad at me. Both of you. Over Talia. Of course I couldn’t come open up to you and beg for your help, even though that’s what I ended up doing." He gestures, a little wildly. "How would I handle it myself? Shado /living in my home/. Why would you think I wanted to handle that myself. I don’t understand, I don’t understand."
"I thought you were trying to prove something," says Kate, voice small, quiet. "That you wanted to prove to us that you could do this all your damn self, that she couldn’t hurt you anymore. That’s what I thought and I was goddamn wrong—and then she was dead and what the hell do I say with regards to that when I don’t even know what was going on, which was my own damn fault too?"
Ollie drops heavily back into his chair. “She hurt me plenty,” he says dully. “It hurt worse to think you didn’t care.” Ollie looks up, at Kate, slightly past her. “I dunno what you can say. It’s too late for anything now.”
Kate stares out into the room, into the middle distance. “So what,” she says, and her voice cracks a little. “Do you want me to leave?”
Ollie’s mouth works a few times, like he’s gathering saliva to talk. When he opens it, though, it’s to shift his bottom row of teeth against the top, the slight scrape of bone loud in the quiet room. “No,” Ollie says unsteadily. “But I don’t know why you want to stay.”
”Because I love you,” Kate replies, and her voice properly cracks this time. “And I do care, and if I can’t fix what I’ve fucked up, then at least I can show you those things now.”
"/Do/ you love me?" Ollie sucks his bottom lip in, shifting to stretch one leg out. "It doesn’t feel like it. I haven’t felt like …" He sighs, suddenly, harshly. "Having an open relationship was the worst fucking decision we ever made, you know that?"
"Yes, I love you," Kate says, "it wouldn’t fucking hurt like this if I didn’t. I wouldn’t feel like such a shit." She presses her fingertips to her forehead, purses her lips, then says, simply, in response to his last comment, "Do you think so?"
Ollie blinks a few times, assessing. “I’m not trying to make you feel like shit,” he says eventually.
"I know you aren’t. But I’m not going to just not feel bad about my own massive fuckup regarding my husband, who I owe more than that. I’m not going to wallow in it, it’s not going to do any good, but yes, I feel like shit about it."
"What do /you/ think," Ollie says instead, circling back around to push Kate’s own question back at her. "Tell me."
"What do I think about our relationship? I don’t think it was the worst decision we ever made. But I also know there’s far more I could do, could have done, to make things seem less skewed."
Ollie sits up a little. “You know I’m not talking about Bruce,” he says. “Because Bruce loves me. And more than that, he always /liked/ me. It’s not Bruce.” Ollie makes a face, as if something bitter has come up in the back of his throat. And maybe it has.
"Then what is it?" Kate asks. "Is it me?"
Ollie swallows. “Yeah, in a way, I guess,” he admits. “I mean, it was a while ago, but. When we decided to have an open relationship I didn’t realize it would be with somebody who actively /loathed/ me.” He spreads his hands, palms turned up as he keeps talking, not meeting Kate’s eyes as a faintly anxious-but-trying-to-cover-it tone seeps through his voice. “I mean it was a while ago. But when you started taking Bruce’s side on everything and just scolding me all the time even if I hadn’t /done/ anything, it just … reminded me of it all. So I started to think maybe it was /me/.”
Kate can feel her teeth gritting at the back of her mouth as she realizes where and how she’s screwed up here, the accompanying pain in her jaw. “I…” she starts, brow furrowing. “I just…it was stupid of me, Ollie. It was all from back…back THERE, and what happened after it, last year, and trying to make everything run perfect because I was still scared of spooking Bruce.” Kate clarifies, and her brow’s furrowed so deep you could plant next year’s crop there, “And doing that made things bad instead, fucked everything up.”
"You mean in Cachement. With the … whatever they were, with them forcibly impregnating you. The demon baby." Ollie’s beyond speaking in euphemism right now, and the words come out plain and unvarnished. "And Bruce leaving us when we got back. Is that what you mean?"
"Yeah. I wanted…I wanted it so ‘everything was beautiful and nothing hurt’," says Kate, quoting Vonnegut. "And it was stupid."
Ollie presses the heels of his hands against his eyebrows. “The sentiment isn’t stupid,” he murmurs. “Sacrificing me to try and make it happen was the part that didn’t work. Not for me, anyhow.”
"It didn’t work for me either," Kate retorts. "Seeing as I’m losing you and it’s my own goddamn fault. You weren’t the one who I should have been trying to fix and nagging at, Ollie."
Ollie is quiet for a while after this. “I guess that’s as good a place as any to pinpoint it to,” he decides. “Cachement. That’s good. Gives us a place to work from.”
Kate looks over at him, face drawn and a little haggard. “I’m sorry, Ollie,” she says. “For what little it’s worth. I wanted everything to be okay for once and it turned out that how I thought I’d get there was entirely and utterly wrong. That I’m entirely wrong.”
Ollie shifts, uncomfortable. “I didn’t say you were entirely wrong,” he begins, mouth pinched. “That’s not what I meant, Kate. This isn’t all or nothing. I’m not trying to make you feel like a villain. I’m just … I dunno. Sad.”
"I was wrong to make you feel like I did," Kate replies. "Like I didn’t care about you or about us. I’m sad too."
Ollie rustles around in his seat. “Okay,” he says, slightly rushed. “Okay. It’s all right. I—” Ollie takes a breath, eyebrows furrowing a bit. “What happened in Cachement. You haven’t talked about it enough, Kate. Did you ever talk to Bruce about it? After you and me talked about it that time? Because I really think that would help, y’know, being able to discuss it with him, since Bruce gets so affected by babies and pregnancy and stuff like that and I mean, I know you had a miscarriage already and the thing in Cachement, that was awful, and I feel like you haven’t had enough of a chance to work through it—”
"It’s not all right," Kate protests gently—they might be able to make it all right, but it’s not all right yet and she doesn’t want him to dismiss it entirely—but the way Ollie’s talking means she’s not able to dodge the other questions and the statements and deep down she doesn’t want to. "I…no. Not really. Everything went to shit and there wasn’t time, and now…" She squeezes her eyes shut. "That’s maybe what got me about Mama."
"Whaddyou mean? Seeing your mom made you think about that part of it? Carrying babies?" Ollie sits forward a little, reaching out for Kate’s hand. "Tell me. I’m not gonna get there on my own, Katie."
”She saved me in Cachement. And she saved me in Gotham. And she saved me when I was small, christ, how many times could Walter have…” Kate shakes her head. “I couldn’t even protect my son when there wasn’t even a direct threat against him, Ollie, how shit am I as a parent? I don’t deserve to ever try again even if the circumstances were right.” Kate mutters, “No wonder I was trying to make everything else perfect, seeing as I’m the element that’s always fucked.”
Ollie curls his fingers around hers. “That’s not true,” he says. “None of us would say that. Ramsey’s come out the other side fine, and even if you were a little overwhelmed for a while, that’s why you’ve got partners. That’s why you’ve got friends who’re willing to step in. It, y’know, takes a village, right? And it doesn’t make you any lesser as a parent. You’ve been there for him when he needed you most.” He wrinkles his nose when Kate mutters. “And that’s not true either. I wouldn’t say that and I /know/ Bruce wouldn’t. You think we haven’t both felt that way too? That we were the fuckups? It’s not the truth for any of us.” It takes some effort for Ollie to say that — not on Bruce’s account, or Kate’s, but his own. “I’ve screwed up so many things, Kate, but not this. None of us have.”
Kate doesn’t answer the part about Ramsey—that’s deep-seated and a long way from ever going. “It feels like I’ve fucked this up,” she says instead. “Fucked up you and me, that part of it anyway.”
Ollie stops squeezing her hand, seeming to realize with a start how hard he was pressing into her wrist-bones. “No,” he shakes his head. “I’m hurt, and I’m confused, but I don’t think we’re fucked up for good. Not if we’re in a mind to fix things. Not if we really mean it.” Ollie twists his mouth around a bit as he thinks. “I don’t expect you to be a saint,” he says suddenly. “Even if that’s what your mom seemed like. That’s what moms are /supposed/ to seem like, especially if they died while you were still a kid. I’m not holding you to that standard. And if you and me and Bruce had a baby, you would be a wonderful parent, you both would.”
Kate reaches out to keep Ollie’s hand there—she doesn’t want him to go away. “I do really mean it,” she says. “I also really mean it about…about being a fuckup, as a mom. I don’t even know why I want—” She cuts herself off. “You’d be damn wonderful as well,” she says, because that’s also true and she can trust herself to say that rather than any of the rest of this messed up train of thought.
"I don’t want to be one," Ollie says shortly, and makes a frustrated, dismissive sound even as he reaches for Kate’s hand again. He pushes his thumb along her palm, cupping her hand in his. "Why /do/ you want a baby with us?" he asks, carefully, not wanting it to sound like an accusation or something aggressive. "Maybe it’s cathartic to think about? If you feel like you screwed up with Ramsey. Maybe it’d feel like a second chance?"
"I know," Kate says, and Ollie’s first comment does far more to cut in than any of his other questions, it’s all she can do to keep from flinching, but she manages. "I…because you’re the best men I know, that’s why, and I want to build things, make things, with you both. That’s why.”
"A /baby/, though," Ollie presses, peering at Kate intently. "That’s not the same level as us all being a business entity together, or getting married, or building a home together. That’s a /new life/ and … I dunno. Considering the amount of issues when it comes to kids among the three of us, I just. I guess I don’t get it." He divots his bottom lip with his teeth. "It was a nice fantasy for a while. But I never wanted it the way you two do. I don’t understand it."
And that’s why she doesn’t talk about Cachement and what happened there. Part of it is Bruce, sure. But a good deal of it is because she knows what her want caused there and knows that Ollie doesn’t, can’t, shouldn’t have to think about her wanting that, or worry about it. ”I don’t know,” says Kate. “If it’s not that, then I just don’t know. Maybe it’s hormones or something, or my body going into shit, shit, biological clock mode. I can’t explain.”
Ollie considers this, nods. “All right,” he says. “If that’s what it is. But that doesn’t mean I think you should ignore it all. Clearly it means something to /you/, and you should be able to work through it with somebody, okay? That’s important. The way these things scratch at your insides is important. I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have anybody to talk to.”
Kate nods a little and presses her forehead against his shoulder for a moment. “That goes for you, too, you know,” she points out. “You shouldn’t just…if there are things we need to talk about, we should talk about them, even if the timing is shitty.”
"Okay," Ollie says, easily enough, but his expression as Kate tips her head against his shoulder is more dubious. He circles back in the conversation to get away from the feeling, saying, "Getting out your feelings about your parents won’t help anything concrete, you’re right about that. But it’ll feel better, Kate. People need closure. There’s all kinds of things we don’t get to have an ending for and some of ‘em … we could really use it. I mean—" He reaches down and touches her chin, pulling back a little so he can look at her face," —you kinda got the ultimate chance at putting an ending on it, right? Not just your dad fucking things up again, but also you and your mom and grandma working together to set things right."
Kate frowns a little, looking back at Ollie, because his dodge has not gone unnoticed, even if she didn’t see the expression on his face. “A little,” she says. “I guess. I mean…I could do with reassurances that it’s all entirely over, that he’ll never hurt any of us again. But maybe that’s what Mama did, the best she could possibly, considering the circumstances.” She clears her throat, giving him a steady look. “Don’t just give me ‘okay’, though. Not when it’s been pretty obvious how fucked up I made stuff, and you don’t get to use my box of issues as an excuse.”
Ollie shrugs. “It’s not an excuse, it’s important,” he says. “And I mean ‘okay’. I don’t really have much else when it comes to that, not yet. We’ll see what happens. I hope it gets better, but it won’t be like it used to, and I want that to be all right. I want it to be a positive change. But I dunno if that’ll happen so right now, it’s ‘okay’.”
"It doesn’t have to be like it used to to be good," Kate says, and she truly believes that, wishes she could make him believe it—but in that case, it wouldn’t be good at all. "We’ll try. I’ll fucking try."
Ollie swallows, nodding. “You should really talk to him about Martha’s key,” he says, reaching out to touch the shape of it where it lies against her chest on its chain. “What it opens. What he gave you access to. I think that’ll —” Ollie takes a sharp breath, clasping Kate’s hand again. “I think it’ll do a lot to convince you that you’re a good mother. What Bruce thinks about you in that regard.”
Kate catches Ollie’s hand, holds it in hers, close to her chest. “Okay,” she says, and this is an okay that she means, too. “I will, I promise.”