welcome to the justice lounge

He’s standing at the large floor to ceiling window, still dressed in the jacket he’d worn that day. Sipping on the tumbler of scotch he holds in his hand, Bruce waits.

The painkillers Ollie’s taking now are a step up from the ones he’d finished, and they help him to move less stiffly and gingerly — something Ollie’s grateful for, when he sees Bruce. For some reason appearing before them limping and banged-up is a prospect he can’t handle, right now.

You can’t not dress for Wayne Tower, and Kate’s wearing a black trouser suit, red shell underneath. Perhaps thumbing her nose at Gotham a little, the suit’s not designer—it’s off-the-rack from Macys. Doesn’t mean she’s not impeccable. Also doesn’t mean she’s not through half her vodka martini by now either. She looks up at the sound of the door from where she’s perched on the arm of a chair.

"Hey," Ollie says, stopping some distance from them both. Hovering. Bruce nods.

"Hey," says Kate, echoing a little. She’s tense, a little wary, but there’s a furrow in her brow at just how fucking beat up Ollie looks. He taps his fingers against his thighs and then jams his hands in his pockets, hunching over a little. "So. You’re both mad at me. Wanna tell me why?"

Bruce moves over to refill Kate’s martini with the shaker on the tray near them. He looks over at Ollie, one glance, and then back at what he’s doing for her. He ignores Ollie’s question and asks, instead. “Can you drink with whatever it is you’re taking?”

"Yes. At least, I /have/ been."

Kate gives Ollie a look, but this is only the ‘Oliver, don’t be so fucking self-destructive’ look. Ollie shrugs at her. “I could use a drink, is what I’m saying. That’s all.”

"I just have concern about your liver," says Kate. "That’s all." She nods at Bruce for the drink and pokes at the lemon peel curled neatly in the glass.

Bruce blinks at him and then finishes with Kate’s drink before he steps back, to his own. He doesn’t pour Ollie one. Then, glancing at the woman between them, he states. “You went behind my back on something that not only concerned me as a League member, but went back on everything you’ve been attempting to conjure up as necessary in our relationship.” He holds Ollie’s gaze, which seems incredibly difficult then, and is, and states. “Trust. Communication. Openness.” He takes a breath and continues. “You did something unilaterally, as if you were a person on your own, and not in.. This, and after understanding the depth of how it affected Kate and I, you stated that you had no regret for your actions.” Then, he repeats, nearly verbatim, what he had told Kate the night they’d found out. “What happened to her, what mattered, it was important because of my son. Because of Damian.” He looks at Ollie. “Moving into the future knowing I did what I could for someone who I once cared about. Who gave me something I can’t—” He stops, blinking, and takes a long, draining drink of his scotch.

( there's a reason not to care )

Oliver is waiting, arms folded and mouth in a tight line, for Dick to meet him down the corridor from the Medbay. He’s suited up in the reinforced version of his costume that Bruce had made, quiver and bow but no mask.

Dr. Adebayo is administering a second round of antibiotics into Talia’s IV, checking her vitals and recording them. She is in the room with the other woman for another few minutes before exiting: the security door closes behind her.

Oliver shifts positions when he sees Dr. Adebayo emerge into the corridor, watching to see if there are any extra security measures he needs to take note of. Not watching /too/ closely. No need to tip her off. Bruce has probably left strict and precise orders on how Talia’s to be dealt with, and by whom.

Dickiebird jogs quickly down the hall, fiddling with his wrist computer. He turns off the tracking receiver in his suit; it’ll only work if he activates it in an emergency. No need to give away their plan before it happened. He spots Ollie and hurries along. “Hey, sorry I’m late. Had to steal a suit.” He gestures at his darker colors. It’s more obviously reinforced than his usual suit, almost like a version of his Batsuit.

Oliver blows out a breath. “Good idea,” he says, then nods in the direction of the doctor. “Give it a minute and then we’ll get Talia, whether Dr. Adebayo’s gone or not.” He pauses. “But I’d rather the doctor wasn’t here for it.”

Dickiebird glances over at Adebayo. “Yeah, good call. I can always try a distraction, if we need it.”

( and now i moan and now i holler )

Kate dozes off on a QT breakroom sofa.

Ramsey sits beside his mother, playing what is surely the seven-hundredth game of Zelda today.

Kate stirs a little, and as she wakes, realizes she’s started to drool. It’s a good thing she sorta technically owns these sofas now. “Ugh, Ram, how long was I asleep, honey?”

Ramsey glances over at his mother, then at the clock on the wall behind her. “Couple’a hours,” he mumbles, clicking a button that causes an oversized sword to start causing damage before he actually looks back over at the screen.

"Oh geez. Oh my god," says Kate. "You could have woke me up so we could go home, it would have been okay." She gathers, somehow, that Ramsey is either okay with sitting there playing with his 3DS or doesn’t care enough about where he is yet. She’d thought the latter was getting better, what with him wanting to be in LA, but…she doesn’t know. What needs to happen, really, is she needs to be able to ask. As Ollie said, Ram is clearly her son, and he’s reacting almost exactly as she has—and had, at his age.

Ramsey shrugs, frowning at the little blinking ‘charge battery’ light. “It’s okay, I didn’t want chili for dinner anyway.” He breaks a few pots, gathering up all the coins, and asks, without looking at her: “Did you and Pa and Mr. Bruce break up?”

Kate is startled, then clears her throat, gently. “You better save that, dulcito. And no, actually, we didn’t break up at all. Did someone say something?”

Ramsey looks up at her, for a long moment, then nods. “Okay, that’s good. I didn’t know.” He saves the game, shutting his console with a satisfying click. “Do you think we could have pozole from somewhere instead of chili?”

Ramsey shakes his head. “No, but Pa moved back home.”

( schism )

It was hard to concentrate on his work, getting some sketches for the city. Kyle kept turning over in his head what Damian said to him at the cabin and those large, resolute grey eyes staring up at Kyle. Sometimes those eyes morphed into larger blue ones, fringed with remorseful tears. Zee’s face, when she explained what Damian had meant to him.

Kyle didn’t know why he couldn’t let it go. Maybe it was because there was something reminiscent of Parallax, tied up in all this. Being taken over by some evil thing, having it control him and then painfully ripped out - Kyle hated that, and he was angry. The monster had won, and taken Kyle’s memories of Damian Wayne as its prize. It took a while to realize it, but Kyle wanted those memories back. They were his.

( ”Bananas and tonic water,” that Dionysus-creature told Kyle, before it disappeared.)

So there was Kyle in Coast City at 1am in the morning, in the kitchen with a glass of thickly blended bananas and tonic water, his Waynetech tablet connected to Roy’s laptop. He spooned some of the thick drink into his mouth, looking at the array of items on the table.



( the tendrils of his past )

Roy texts Kyle and Zee and, well, being a huge gossip, everyone he knows:

[TXT] yo damian just wandered in from the snow

[TXT] like the abominable snowman

[TXT] abdominal?

Kyle is watching backstage after Zee’s show and he looks at Roy’s text and blinks. [Ring Txt] cool?

Kyle [Ring Txt] I think it’s taun taun

Zee busies herself cleaning off her stage makeup when her phone buzzes against her vanity. With a tap the message blinks out from Roy and she sighs, eyes closing and brows pinching, “Did you get that too?” she asks Kyle.

Kyle nods and shrugs. “Damian is…Damian Wayne, right? Robin?” Kyle notices Zee’s frown in her dressing room mirror and comes over, thinking of the text she sent him when he was in space. “I’m…supposed to know him, aren’t I. I’m sure it’ll be okay, Zee.”

Zee cups her hands against her temples, nodding, “You’re supposed to.” her hands shaking against her skull, “But it will not be okay.” the worst she could do would be to hobble together Kyle’s relationship with Damian by the poorly kept scrapbook of personal memories she held of the two. The worst she could do would be to erase Damian’s own memories of Kyle to make it even. The very worst she could do would be to let it go on as it existed now. Maybe she wasn’t as good as she liked to believe maybe the fibers of a boy still remained strung in Kyle’s mind, but a connection was needed to tighten the bonds, but she knew and feared that was very impossible.

( a missing square )

Ollie’d left some of the questions unasked. “Are you okay” was the big one, followed closely by “Is Ramsey okay”, but there was also the whopping big Where was your heart’s desire, where did Dionysus’s relocation spell zap you to, was it LA or Star or Gotham or somewhere you still keep secret because it’s too raw to tell?

But those questions, all of them, could wait because Kate had done what she’d sworn and gotten Ramsey out. Although when Ollie made it back from Star City to the Manor (it was unspoken, that they’d all converge back at the Manor) to deliver the child, a miserable little bundle of wan brown feathers deposited into his mama’s arms, the look on Kate’s face wasn’t anywhere near triumph or joy. It was hardly even satisfaction that they’d succeeded.

Ollie watched his wife cradle their child, stroke and kiss his cold hair and try to rub warmth into his little round limbs, and all he could see on her face was a drawn, terrible mix of anger and heartbreak.

And looking down at Ramsey, a tiny morsel of a person heaped under thick eiderdowns in one of the cosier rooms of the Manor — Alfred hovered at a respectful distance, appearing like magic to bring hot tea or stoke the fire, anything to keep mother and child comfortable — Ollie could see why Kate didn’t feel like what they’d accomplished was that much of a win.

It wasn’t until the exhaustion had overwhelmed the trauma in the boy’s small body and blanketed him in a deep, unmoving sleep that Ollie was able to take Kate out of the room for a minute, put his arms around her, hold her against him for a while. “Ollie,” Kate said after he’d warmed her enough, thawed through some of her numbness, “what if he was down there for too long? What if it’s too much for him?” The unused, shattered tenor of her voice made her still-unspoken fears visible through the cracks: he’s already been through so much, I wanted a good life for him, not one like mine, what if I’ve failed him (again) and he stops trusting that his mama will be there for him.

"Let him sleep," Ollie murmured against Kate’s roughened hair, between kisses. "Let him get some rest and then we’ll figure things out. You got him back, Katie, that’s what’s important." He lets another length of time stretch, and before it starts to feel too comfortable, Ollie tells her, "We have to find Bruce, wherever he might have turned up. They … I think him and Talia might have lost their child. One of their children." It was ugly enough that even Ollie, never lost for words, had trouble articulating what he’d seen of the deal being made. For the unborn one or … or Damian.

( don't look at me looking back at you )