Look who just walked into the room/ The guilted and faded

[knightbynight]

Who: Bruce and Jason (closed) + Catch All
What: Wolf stalking and assorted things
When: October.
Where: Around the church
Content Warnings: Complicated family dynamics. Will edit if needed.




There's a wolf (probably wolf, could be another large wild animal) stalking and snooping around his cabin.

It isn't being all that subtle - the temperatures are low enough that tracks aren't so much a thing, but even without that... not all that subtle.

Also, he's fucking Batman.

That leaves him in a weird position. He's cautious enough and has reason to be - it's a fucking wolf, not a stray dog. But he's also perfectly well aware there's at least one... pet? wolf within Milton.

That has him going outside, but carefully, to stand just outside. He watches and listens, waits and sees, basically. Ignores what the cold is doing to pretty much every joint in his body.

But close to the door so he can get back inside if he has to. ...also with the sharpened metal bat he arrived with in his pocket. Just in case. (And also with the acute awareness doing this is probably stupid, but not quite able to stop himself).

Comments

[knightbynight]

Bruce loves Tim.

If he didn't, he would be far more capable of handling every single thing Tim says feeling like it is a piece to a different puzzle. Because he loves Tim it makes him feel like he is the one going insane.

And failing.

"I decided that I needed an easily defensible location with a variety of zones to defend." He leaves Tim on the bed. "Stay there." Don't make him drag you back.

He'll be back with hot water and soap.

Also? You're not the only one worried about what's going on with your immune system.

[ployboy]

Well at least one of them still believes there's a puzzle to work out despite the crap enfolding the cardboard pieces; Tim tried to ditch the trash in the dumpster.

But he's weaker in his resolve than he ever wanted to be.

So it's a hangdog silence when Bruce returns. Tim hadn't tried to disappear into the old floorboards like a roach. He looks at the floor and only the floor, and he shows off the cut and its clean but lazy red drip.

"Look Ma, no gangrene," he mumbles. And he's a sorry sight, because Tim's drowning in guilt. We put 'em in their holes- who the hell says that about the dead.

Tim scrubs at his face.

Focus.

B gave him some good... crumbs of...

"Robin stays at Lakeside," he says. Reports. Whatever. "Some people were gifted telepathy. From the Aurora. But it's not enough, because the gift isn't... I don't know how to word it."

Fucking tired, Bruce. He's fucking tired.

(Bitch more about it, Drake.)

"The communication needs to be more accessible. And trustworthy. Which you can't get if you need to rely on one or two people and... he-says, she-says. Bruce, if we had had half of a working warning system we wouldn't have gotten our asses kicked and"

(Timothy Drake and getting to the point, a divorced concept. It was a bad divorce. There were kids involved. And Derpy. Derpy didn't deserve-)

"We need a Bat signal."

Yes. He's serious.

[knightbynight]

Tim still being there is almost a surprise- not quite, but nearly and if it had been it would have been a pleasant one.

He eyes up the cut, and then gets busy using soap and water on it. Not having gangrene now doesn't mean it can't get it later. He's not overly gentle about it, but nor is he intentionally rough - efficient sums that one up pretty well.

He is quiet while he works, but it isn't because he isn't (or hasn't been) listening to Tim. It's because he is listening. Listening, taking it as seriously and considering.

"For how many people and at what range?"

Also, unspoken but: Fuck telepathy.

[ployboy]

Thank you.

Tim feels like he wants to cry. (Take a shot.)

"--."

He closes his mouth, having to remind himself that he is dangerously close to chewing his whole tongue off at this rate if bites down on it one more time. That would make a lot of people happy.

Tim, a wuss, keeps stubborn eyes away from B. And away from the wound.

Ow, you jerk, and second,

"I don't know. Ask Robin."

He's not even trying to snark about it he just thinks

B, please understand. He has no idea. And so the guilt grows.

[knightbynight]

He's not upset by the answer, though there is... another piece to one of the puzzles in play with Tim in there, for him.

Mostly he's got one knee on the ground and is making sure that wound does some decent bleeding in the process of getting it cleaned up.

"I'll track him down and get some more information for him - or make an educated guess and pull something together. Do you know who the telepaths are?"

[ployboy]

He does, but momma didn't raise no snitch.

Tim takes the excuse to search the bedroom a little from where he's positively trapped on the edge of the bed. If he's not careful, he's going to zonk out in two-point-two minutes and he'll refuse to wake up and welcome himself back to the world of the living unless hell itself has frozen over. Oh, wait.

"You'll figure it out," he says, because it's plain as day (which is waning in its light every day and Tim's just sitting here dreaming about a nap-)

"You're in a church and some people here really love their Jesus in the mornings. You're going to sit through so many sermons. I think all of the Aurora gifts take some getting used to. Someone nearly burned down the Store with their new firebending. That... was actually kind of funny."

There were Mushrooms.

Anyway,

It's very uncomfortably warm now that he's inside and still with four-to-five hoodies wrapped around him, most of questionable fit. The thing is, about hoodies, ya can't just chuck them off. You gotta do that damned wiggle to peel them off. And Tim's not about that life.

(Bruce, he's tired, what's the matter if he bleeds all over the mattress-)

Tim ponders... whether or not he even answered B's question. Frankly? Man, he doesn't know. He's been running around with his head half cut off and it's rude as hell that this useless man is demanding answers from him that he should have himself.

Speaking of

Tim is weak, his bloodline is weak, he will not survive the winter-

but.

"I told you about Christmas Pig, right?"

Frankly he has no id

"He threw up a chainsaw for me. Real cool dude. We can get more firewood in one Aurora than four guys can get in three days."

What he means is,

that's a lot of care going into a leg that's to be abused into usefulness. So help him God.

[knightbynight]

If he is going to figure it out, why in the name of hell does he need to figure it out instead of being told?

Never mind, that is absolutely an answer he'd given.

Once he's gotten some decent blood flow out of that cut, Bruce stops torturing Tim in the name of concerns and gets busy cleaning it up, with actually clean bandaging. He suspects it won't stay that way and Tim won't bother, but still.

"No one's told me about the Christmas pig, yet. I don't think I want to know. If I turn telepathic here, someone should knock me unconscious immediately for everyone's sake."

He's just... replying where and to what he can.

While gathering pieces and forming a picture.

[ployboy]

Sucks to suck.

Tim lets himself indulge in a hiss- he's hurting. Obviously. For more than one reason. Perhaps less obvious. Especially where B is involved. The man's positively hopeless. But Tim figures he can hiss his displeasure and not get sass about it.

Sass. Christmas Pig.

"Huge... pig. Dude, we all thought we were going to die," he explains. And maybe he still thinks they're all going to die, but that's too much for now. Everything is too much for now. Tim had just wanted to sleep off the nausea and harass this son of a bitch in the process and

(he's sorry, Mrs. Wayne, he didn't mean-)

Obviously Bruce will get a horse tranq if he ends up in someone else's head. That would be cruel and unusual and extremely punitive punishment for whoever ends up as the casualty. Not to mention the whole Secret thing. So Tim doesn't bother to acknowledge that bit.

So:

Damian's got the zombies.

Tim's got the vampires.

Bruce has got the mind readers.

Jason still gets the werewolves because Tim Drake is convinced it makes sense.

Anyway,

"There's the firebenders, the telepaths, and the ones who run really fast but not Speedforce fast."

There's more gifts. Tim's sure. He doesn't know what, and it kills him to not know. It kills him in ways Bruce can understand.

It helps. To feel less- totally frigging lost. About everything. All the time.

[knightbynight]

Ketamine, hit him over the head with something hard enough to crack his (thick) skull, or he'll just slam his own head into something hard and do it himself. He'd feel bad for telepaths that already exist here, but if they go into his head without an invitation (that he will not be issuing), they deserve what they get.

Which would be a lot. Bruce is a master of compartmentalization and his brain works in an orderly enough way, but it also has more minefields than the Northern Barrage.

"At least two thirds of those make sense in this setting." The third doesn't make sense to him anywhere.

He definitely uses information to... build a safety net of sorts and not having it isn't great. He gets that. He also suspects Tim is both feeding him information intentionally (good), as much as just frustrated by his own lack of enough of it. This place isn't exactly forthcoming with it.

Meanwhile: "You need sleep."

[ployboy]

The bar is on he floor. Tim's lips twitch up in a smirk.

To say the bar is on the floor is inaccurate, though the phrasing itself sticks around to offer comfort either through absurdity or familiarity.

The bar is encrusted into the floor. It's been dug in and stuck there and it's hardly even a raised bump among the floorboards.

Tim hums, "Yeah? What gave that away?"

World's Greatest Detective was a moniker only ever smothered in sarcasm.

But it's enough for Tim, and he nods to Captain Obvious. Sleeping off the wooziness of the moment had been the plan. Cool. They're not on the same page, or same book, or same library. Maybe they're in the same city. And that's cool.

"Roger, wilco," he says. And sits up straighter in preparation for, "Help me up. I'm sleeping in the benches."