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whoa-royal-chaos · 5 years

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Sealed With a Kiss (short story)

Takes place ~2055. MAJOR spoilers for what I have planned for Mai and Niklas down the road. Full story under the cut

has not been retconned after @melanin-monster and I figured out deets between rustavya/liang/mikawa, btw

𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕠𝕡𝕠𝕤𝕚𝕤:

𝘈𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘶𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬. 𝘈 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘴. 𝘈 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘷𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘈𝘯 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢 𝘥𝘰𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦, 𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘺. 𝘈 𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴.

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑒𝓃𝒹 𝒷𝑒𝑔𝒾𝓃𝓈 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489695)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝒶 𝓁𝒶𝒹𝓎'𝓈 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓉𝑒𝓈𝓎 𝒾𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝓇𝓂𝑜𝓇-𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓌𝑒𝒶𝓅𝑜𝓃 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489697)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝓈𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓉 𝓈𝓊𝓇𝓇𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489699)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝒶 𝓆𝓊𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓌𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝑒𝑒𝓉𝒽 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489701)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝒶𝓃 𝑒𝓂𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝒾𝓈 𝒶 𝓂𝑜𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇, 𝓉𝑜𝑜 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489703)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝓌𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝒻𝓊𝓁𝓁 𝒸𝒾𝓇𝒸𝓁𝑒 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489705)

♔𝐼𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝓌𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝒸𝓁𝓊𝒹𝑒 (https://urstyle.com/styles/489707)

The lipstick was ready. But was she?

*****

Queen Mai König of Königreich der Welten, formerly Princess Mai Mei of Liang, remembered when she first discovered that her husband had killed her cousin. She’d learned it from diminutive Liviana Viriatus, a Lusitanian princess who was the size of a child. Liviana had overheard Queen Fareeha Amari of Mamlakat Alssahra (who was only a princess at the time) discussing Zhou’s disappearance with a military officer. Fareeha always loved her military friends, remembered Mai. Them, and her snakes and hyenas.

Mai remembered how she’d felt. She’d wanted to rake the blades of her lace hand fan across his face, to stab his eyes out with the heels of her designer stilettos, to tear out his throat with her perfectly manicured French nails.

But of course, that had never come to pass. Her uncle, Emperor Ming Mei of Liang, had granted Prince Niklas König of Königreich der Welten her hand in marriage and access to Liang’s plentiful natural resources since Niklas’s father had given him the military assistance he needed to reclaim the throne after civil war and Jarippan invaders tore Liang apart.

The reign of Emperor Jing-shi Mei, Mai’s father, had collapsed as fighting erupted in between the nationalist and socialist factions that formed during the weak Mei Dynasty. Mai grew up in seclusion with her uncle in the valleys of the impenetrable Black Mountains. Her childhood was hiding and donning disguises as easily as she changed clothes and impromptu etiquette lessons and martial arts. By the time Ming’s armies defeated the last of the socialists, Mai could incapacitate an adversary in a dozen different ways without mussing her hair or smudging her lipstick. And when the imperial court of Liang was re-established, Mai found these skills invaluable as she navigated the treacherous sea of cunning, cutthroat politicians who sought to wrestle power away from Emperor Ming Mei.

Cutthroat politicians, indeed-it was common knowledge that one would have to be a fool to walk through the ancient Liangii palace without at least a dagger concealed somewhere on their person.

*****

Princess Mai had gone to Aciras, because the Aciran royalty had invited the betrothed princes and princesses of the world to an extravagant party before they were wed. There, she met Niklas for the first time, as well as Liviana, who would become a lifelong friend, and Fareeha, who would become a lifelong rival.

Mai recognized that she and Fareeha were nothing alike, yet exactly the same. Both of them would have done anything for their respective nations. The only difference was in their methodology; Mai liked bladed fans and hairpin daggers and believed in the art of invisible strength and the art of winged eyeliner. Fareeha liked missile launchers and machine guns and believed in the art of flaunting one’s strength and the art of sweat-stained tank tops.

*****

Mai remembered the ball that the king and queen of Aciras had hosted the week before her wedding. Soft violin music swirled through the opulent ballroom. Paintings of idyllic landscapes encased in gilt frames decorated the walls, and crystal chandeliers and delicate champagne flutes sparkled prettily in the light.

Mai was dancing with Niklas. He was a handsome man, and charming, too. His dark hair was slicked back neatly and there was an amiable smile playing at his lips. He was refreshingly funny and charismatic to boot; he was the type of person that you could not help but to be attracted to.

Niklas’s touch made her uneasy.

I should know better than to fall for a handsome face and a nice smile, Mai had thought scornfully to herself. Is that not what I count on others doing? I coat my face in layers of cosmetics and don expensive dresses and spend hours styling my hair all to keep people from realizing that my hairpins can be used as daggers and that there is a knife concealed in my bodice. I pretend that all I am is another pretty face to traitorous Liangii nobles while I plan their downfalls.

Yes: knights had their chainmail and breastplates and steel gauntlets, and Mai Mei had her red lipstick and high heels.

Liu, one of her uncle’s advisers, had informed Mai before the ball that they’d confirmed Prince Niklas’s role in Zhou’s disappearance. But of course, there was nothing that could be done. Königreich der Welten’s military was widely recognized as the most advanced in the world, rivaled only by that of Mamlakat Alssahra and the Britannian Empire, and the betrothal had been finalized years ago. Mai’s marriage would not be cancelled under any circumstances whatsoever. Not even for the assassination of Emperor Ming’s heir.

*****

Mai remembered her wedding night.

The air was cool against Mai’s bare flesh. A waterfall of sleek, ink-black hair cascaded down her exposed back.

Mai sat on the edge of the bed. It was obvious from Niklas’s awkward manner that it was his first time. However, contrary to what she would have others think, it was not Mai’s.

She had been thirteen or fourteen, and posing as the daughter of a poor farmer. The man’s name was Jiang-li Zhang. He had been a nationalist leader with whom her uncle forged an alliance with, seeing as both men wanted to defeat the socialists. General Zhang approached Mai every night during the lengthy negotiation process, and she let him have his way with her. The fate of Liang was hanging in balance. It went without saying that Mai would have done anything for her homeland.

For Liang, Mai thought to herself as she gently kissed her husband-her husband, the same man who had Zhou killed. Zhou, whom she’d loved as if he were her brother. Mischievous, boyish Zhou. Ridiculous, outrageous, wonderfully vexing Zhou-dead, by the hand of the man whose lips were pressed against hers. Revulsion clawed up her throat. Mai violently pushed it down. I will do this. I will do this, for Liang.

*****

Mai remembered the birth of their first son, and how he brought much joy to her life. Niklas insisted that they name him after his father, though he allowed Mai to choose the middle name.

Mai had looked Niklas straight in the eye and smiled. “Zhou,” she’d told him, holding their baby close. “I want his middle name to be Zhou.”

Their son grew up to be a dutiful soldier-prince, just like Niklas. But Mai could see the playful mischief in his eyes, and her heart ached whenever she glimpsed his wicked smile or his cheerful face. He got it from Zhou, she was certain of it.

Mai and Niklas named their daughter after Liviana Viriatus of Lusitania: the tiny princess who both of them had befriended in Aciras, and the tiny princess who told Mai that Niklas was behind Zhou’s disappearance. Then came another son, who Mai named after Ming. And then came another daughter, who Niklas named after his mother. Mai loved their children dearly, and through their children, she learned to love Niklas.

*****

And so the years passed. Mai was forced to give up her bladed fans and hairpin daggers upon entering Königreich der Welten, where she became Niklas’s wife and queen. Mai knew from a the start what would be expected from her in marriage, and she played her part well. She outwardly supported Niklas in everything he did, from his plans to expand west to the military bases that he built in Liangii cities, but Mai had never been one to forgive and forget. How could she, when Niklas-dear, sweet Niklas, who treated her as if she were the only queen he’d ever known-had killed her cousin? How could she, when her very own husband, the father of her beloved children, was sending his troops into her homeland, to “keep the peace”? Troops from Königreich der Welten stationed in lovely, lovely Liang, a country torn apart by decades of turmoil and strife; a country torn apart by brutal Jarippan invaders who’d sought to take advantage of Liang’s inner conflict. The last thing that Liang needed was another foreign military presence.

Every once in awhile, memories from Mai’s childhood flooded her mind, unbidden. There was Mei’an, the silk capital of the world, reduced to nothing but ash...the lush, tranquil plains of Mengu littered with corpses and crows…Jarippan soldiers setting innocent men and women on fire along the banks of the Qingshui River…

It soon became obvious to Mai that Niklas intended to annex Liang when Emperor Ming Mei died. Ming did not have an heir. His heir had been Zhou.

*****

Mai stared at the deceivingly harmless tube of lipstick. She’d always loved lipstick and the color red. Red was the color of Liang. It was the color of blood and fire and roses. Red was Mai’s color.

The lipstick was ready. It had been ready for quite some time now, ever since she’d received the poison smuggled in from Mamlakat Alssahra.

Mai summoned the cold, deadly fury that she’d left buried deep inside her for two decades. Her fingers itched to clutch at a bladed fan. She steeled her resolve. They might have taken her knives and daggers, but she still had her high heels and red lipstick. And that would be all she needed.

*****

Mai remembered seeing Fareeha Amari of Mamlakat Alssahra for the first time in twenty years.

Mamlakat Alssahran soldiers had attacked a transport convoy from Königreich der Welten, presumably due to territory dispute. After the attack, Niklas arranged to meet with Fareeha to negotiate.

Commander and Queen Fareeha Amari was still the bold, confident woman that Mai met in Aciras. Her black hair was cut short, and her bronze-colored skin was tanner. Mai thought that she had more scars, but she could not be certain.

Fareeha looked Mai up and down, starting from Mai’s soft, smoky eyeshadow, through her dark lipstick and one-shoulder crimson gown, and down to her black stilettos. “Mai Mei,” she said, her teeth flashing as she smiled and tilted her head to the side, narrowing her dark eyes. “I see that time has not changed you one bit-you are still a snake. Similarly, I still know how to handle them.”

Mai resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “And as I told you all those years ago, Commander Amari,” Mai began softly, “I am afraid that you are mistaken. According to the Liangii zodiac, I am a rat.”

Fareeha threw back her head and laughed loudly. “Ah, yes, Mai Mei. You are a rat. Did you know,” she said, leaning in closer, her eyes twinkling in amusement, “that snakes eat rats?”

Niklas frowned and opened his mouth to interject, as did one of Fareeha’s advisors, but Mai held up a gloved hand and stopped them. “Is this how you make peace, Queen Fareeha? By threatening people?” Mai’s voice was pleasant enough, though there was a sharp edge to it.

Fareeha shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s not like you to be this direct, Mai. What are you trying to say?”

“I am saying that perhaps our esteemed peers in Aciras and Lusitania and the Britannian Empire would not be very appreciative of your diction,” answered Mai, an idea forming in her mind. Oh yes, Fareeha-I am both a snake and a rat. I am both predator and prey. I’ll leave you to puzzle that out for yourself once your plan falls apart. Mai was frightened by her idea, but she gritted her teeth and shoved the fear away. This is for Zhou. This is for Liang.

*****

Mai’s first son, the one that she called Zhou, was there to greet her when she and Niklas returned to Königreich der Welten. “Did you get anything accomplished?” he asked.

Mai shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she answered. “Though Queen Fareeha’s advisor did give me a new tube of lipstick. Mamlakat Alssahran cosmetics are truly divine.” She showed her son the sleek black tube, and smiled. “We’ve already had it tested for anything dangerous, of course. I cannot wait to try it on.”

Her son nodded politely. “Well, I have some good news. Many of our allies, including Aciras, have condemned Mamlakat Alssahra’s actions.”

Mai’s smile grew wider. “Excellent.” Her expression softened as she looked up at her son. “You’ll make a wonderful king,” she said, stroking his face. I’m sorry, Mai added silently. I am truly sorry for what must happen next. I’m killing two birds with one stone, really. Vengeance for your namesake, and fuel for the fire against Mamlakat Alssahra.

*****

The poisoned lipstick was ready. The question was whether or not Mai was ready. She took a deep breath, Zhou’s cheeky grin floating in front of her eyes. Mai saw Liang. Lovely, lovely Liang, with its towering Black Mountains and ancient temples and lush grasslands and mighty rivers. And Liang’s people, who had seen enough fighting and violence to last an eternity. They didn’t need more soldiers in their homes or on their streets.

Liang wouldn’t stand a chance against the armies of Königreich der Welten. Once her uncle died, Niklas would mobilize his troops, and Liang would be his.

Mai had always planned to repay the debt she owed Zhou. But with her uncle nearing the end of his life, time was growing short. Liang’s independence depended on her.

So yes, Mai was ready. She would have preferred to live, but it would have been much too suspicious if Niklas died from the poisoned lipstick and Mai did not. It would mean war in between Königreich der Welten and Liang. No, this way was better. When they discovered King Niklas and Queen Mai dead in their bedchamber as a result of Mamlakat Alssahran lipstick, well...the world would be outraged. Despite all the talks of peace, Mai knew that Fareeha would not stop until she got what she wanted. Her son would have Aciras and Lusitania and the like at his back when he confronted the commander-queen.

Mai carefully applied a thin protective layer of lip gloss to delay the effects of the poison for a couple minutes. Then, she put on a thick layer of the lipstick from Mamlakat Alssahra, the one she’d added smuggled poison to. Niklas walked into their bedchamber, and Mai finished with the poisoned lipstick, leaving the sleek black tube on the table in front of the mirror.

Mai would finally give Zhou his justice. It had been twenty years, but she would do it. Besides, wasn’t revenge a dish best served cold?

“How is everything?” Mai Mei of Liang asked quietly, gliding over to King Niklas König of Königreich der Welten. She gazed into his eyes one last time-eyes that she had fallen in love with, despite everything-and wavered, then hardened her resolve. It had to be done. His fate had been sealed since the moment he gave the order to eliminate Zhou.

Mai placed her hands on either side of Niklas’s face. Niklas gave her a small smile. He opened his mouth to speak.

Mai silenced him with a kiss.

#liang #mai #konigreich der welten #niklas #writing

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fordarkisthesuede · 6 years

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At the Brink of Midnight - Chapter 9

*Arrives two days late with Starbucks* ‘Sup, guys! σ( ▼∀▼)σ These past 96 hours have somehow filled me with a weird chaotic energy, and I pumped out the longest roller-coaster of a chapter I’ve ever done in such a short amount of time!!! Thank you, whoever sent all the writing vibes my way!!!! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆ I’m sending out strong vibes to everybody in return! *May you get hit by the writing bug and have the opportunity and energy to completely translate your ideas to printed words!*

Buuut a big note before we get to the good stuff: I realized too late that the original events of S2 take place in Spring. Like…April. I was writing all of this with the thought that S2 took place in fall; I mean, the characters can wear a leather jacket or a couple of layers comfortably, so I thought “yeah that sounds like early autumn”. Nope! So that means that for this story’s timeline, everything gets shifted into where it should be. On the downside, that means I had to go through and edit all the bits where it said “it was totally spring, you guys”. On the upside… IT’S NOW OCTOBER!!!!! THE SPOOKY SEASON THAT COMPLETELY FITS WITH WHAT’S GOING ON!!! And coincidentally, it’s my favorite time of the year, so I love writing about it even more! I get to add in a thing here and there about the spookiest time of the year, so I’ll have a nice list of what those little changes are uploaded here soon if you don’t feel like re-reading the whole thing. A re-read isn't necessary though, just keep in mind that the humid air of rainy spring in the city is replaced with chilling fronts and even more cloud cover than usual. Why am I bothering with this? Because I’m a stickler for keeping with canon as much as possible and I feel like an absolute fool for not remembering what goddamn time of year it was to begin with. (I mean, I went so far as to download all of TeamFourStar’s play-through because I watched it so often, you think I'd remember to go back and watch the very beginning once in a while…)

Anywho, thank you all again for your continuously loving support!!!

♡~(ɔ ˘3˘)˘⌣˘ c)

Important Spoiler Tags: drugs (mentioned), swearing, canon-typical violence, electric shocks (mentioned), torture of flowers, flirting, almost an excessive use of emoji, crying, romantic dirty thoughts

Read on Ao3 or continue below:

Chapter 9: Grapevines

Bruce Wayne couldn’t remember the last time he’d conducted a meeting from his home office. It wasn’t as if he didn’t use it – the desk surface had hardly any dust settled on it and two empty coffee mugs he’d forgotten about on two different occasions just happened to be stacked behind the monitor – but it felt strange, like a lot of things did lately.

He knew part of the reason for that was watching houses down in the Batcave right now. Knowing he wasn’t alone in the house was comforting, but knowing there were two cops outside the Manor’s front door just waiting for a chance to grab his best friend-cum-houseguest was not, and knowing that they were both close to being thrown in hot water was even less so.

He figured the other reason he felt strange was because he was slipping back into his old habit as if it had never been shelved in the first place. He had time to kill before the video meeting started, so he’d been scouring for information on “Pam”, Jonathan Crane’s ‘old friend’.

There were a few Pamela’s in Gotham, but only one fit within Crane’s age-range and attended Gotham University at about the same time: Pamela Isley, a forty-four-year-old former botanist with a record that ran the length of his arm. Theft, assault, threats, and attempted poisonings all done in the name of extreme environmentalism and social activism were sprinkled in her history before and after her days as a researcher, and according to GCPD records, she was now suspected of running her own drug-ring under the moniker of ‘Poison Ivy’. (Bruce found several recorded instances of people claiming to be Poison Ivy, most of whom were already arrested.)

Bruce would’ve wondered why on Earth she hadn’t been thrown in prison when she made a bomb-threat at a wealthy businessman several states away nearly a decade ago if he hadn’t seen her mug-shot from back then. At thirty-five, she looked every bit as beautiful as a top-billed Hollywood star, with natural orange-red curls cascading over her pale shoulders and ample bust in chemically-tamed waves, flashing the camera a come-hither stare that made it look like she was trying for a part in a high-budget porn flick rather than standing in front of a height chart for her criminal record. Pamela’s charges were mysteriously swept under the rug.

The latest photo he found of her reminded him a bit of those ‘cougar’ dating ads he’d seen – the older Pamela was blowing a kiss to the camera with a mocking look in her dark green eyes. Bruce glared at it. There was little doubt she was using people to cover for her constantly, and when she was in trouble, she managed to wriggle out of it with her looks.

Not this time. She was friends with Dr. Jonathan Crane, and that meant she wasn’t going to get out of this unharmed. The second his virtual meeting was over, Bruce was heading towards Toxic Acres, and hopefully the wounded Crane would still be there to see Batman’s fist hit his –

Bruce snapped out of his thoughts at the buzz of his phone. A message from the BatComputer…?

I’m bored :/

Bruce blinked down at the screen. John had found the emergency messaging system. Of course he had. He was just grateful that the encryption software on his phone was still up to date. Just what else did John poke his nose into down there…? (There was the chance that John would see files he shouldn’t, but Bruce kept those under a thumbprint encryption. He shouldn’t even entertain the thought.)

Stake-outs are usually pretty boring.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you were down here tho! :)

Bruce hovered his thumb over the keyboard, unsure of what to say. The feeling was kind of mutual, if he was being honest; having another person around on a stakeout would at least keep his mind wandering into the worsts of what-ifs and double-checking every last security issue…

No movement on either houses btw. Been reading Crane’s docs in the meantime but it’s DREADFUL!!! I feel like I’m reading a sleeping pill… =_=

You finish your WE stuff yet?

Meeting’s not for another 20 minutes. Been looking up stuff on Crane’s “friend”.

Oh??? :o Do tell!!!!

Bruce couldn’t help but smile at the enthusiasm.

Pamela Isley, former botanist w/ criminal rec., mostly extreme protest kind of stuff. Good chance she’s the head of a drug-ring that moved here a couple months ago; their leader goes by “Poison Ivy”.

They went to college together, but Pamela moved back here recently.

hMmMmm…. That means no burning the place down if we’re stuck! Bad fumes everywhere xP

Bruce focused on the word “we’re”. He hadn’t been planning on bringing John along. He wanted him safe, at home, where no one had a chance of seeing him and he wasn’t put in harm’s way…

Oh!!! You’ve got a bunch of sticky electro-shockers around - do you mind if I tinker with them? :3c pleeeeaaasssee?

What are you thinking of doing with them?

Making one BIIIIIG shock-bomb, of course! ;D I can wire them together so the shock spreads evenly in the space while it’s discharging.

Bruce reconsidered bringing John. He was still learning to curb his impulses, so being outside in a fighting environment would be a serious gamble, but... Maybe that could be their advantage, too. Bruce made a mental note to go dig out the spare bullet-proof vest from his closet’s secret panel.

You can do that?

I played around with making something like it before, but……well, you know.

Time + supplies for that project were low att. I figured I could always go back to it later anyway.

Bruce felt like his heart had deflated and swelled in such a short time that it hurt.

I mean I’m fine with throwing knives around too but I figured that would be less discrete ¯\_(ツ )_/¯

He’d been thinking of different methods of entering the “house”. Most of them featured a silent slip-in and as little combat as possible, but he knew that there would likely be some muscle around to stop any would-be intruders, and getting a quieter jump on them would certainly be helpful. He would certainly be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed that John had thought that far ahead even back then.

If you think you can get it done within 1.5 hours, then yes.

Ha ha ha with these supplies I can get it done in like 40 mins! >:3 just you watch!!!

Btw have you seen the news?

Not yet. Why?

I was on the morning edition! At least they used a good pic ;D

But also saw a guy getting fished out of the harbor. Your handy-dandy invasion software said he’s a registered Ryde driver.

I told you not to fiddle with that.

Sorry, but I only used it the once! Promise!!!

Bruce sighed through his nostrils.

Besides I thought you’d want to know. Think Crane stole his ride and dumped him by the docks? :v

Probably. I can get the plate from up here to verify. DO NOT TOUCH THAT PROGRAM AGAIN.

Yes sir ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Bruce wasn’t sure if that message was supposed to be flirtatious or mocking.

The incoming call from Iman Avesta stopped him from responding. He figured it had to do with John’s escape and the extra security added at Wayne Tower this morning, but why was she calling him now, rather than several hours ago?

“Iman?”

“Hey, Bruce. Hold on a sec – there we go, now we can both -”

“Bruce, what the fuck?” Tiffany asked over the line. “Are you at home right now?”

Bruce almost sighed at the attitude. “Yes, Tiffany, I’m at home, in my office.”

“Uh-huh. I keep getting alerts that your basement’s messaging system is being used. Care to explain that?”

Oh. Of course. He’d forgotten Tiffany had linked her phone to that, too. It’d just…been too long, he supposed. (She couldn’t read them, though, could she? He was fairly sure it didn’t give out mass-texts unless prompted.) “…where are you right now?”

Iman responded instead. “We’re in your second office.”

“…the line’s secure?”

“Of course.” Iman paused, and Bruce knew his new CSO was choosing her words carefully. “I’m guessing you have John Doe in the Batcave?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce, did you fucking break him out?” Tiffany asked with no shortness of impatience.

“I rescued him,” Bruce said firmly. “I know what you’re thinking, and I have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to say, but listen: I had no choice but to take him with me. One of the doctors working at Arkham has gone rogue – he’d been doing experiments on patients, and I have a feeling he’s going to continue them on civilians. I need to find him before then, and John has been helping me.”

“Helping…? You’re not bringing him in the field with you?” Tiffany said disbelievingly. “After that psychopath almost killed us?”

Bruce could still see Joker running at Tiffany, knife in hand, his psychotic breakdown in full force. He could still see him being smacked against the railing, sheer madness played over his long, bloody face as he desperately fought to stab what was his hero.

But John and Joker were as much the same as Bruce and Batman were, and they were constantly changing.

The Joker in the Batcave wasn’t the same one from Ace Chemicals.

“I know what John did,” he answered, trying to breathe even as something wanted to hitch in his throat, “and I know how far he’s come since then. I know you both regret-”

“No, I’m not listening to this right now,” Tiffany scowled, her voice fading in the middle her sentence like she was leaving the room. “Talk some sense into him.”

Bruce heard Iman’s voice call after her, and then nothing for a beat.

Iman sighed. “I’ll talk to her. But Bruce,” she started seriously, “Tiffany isn’t the only one worrying about you. Six months can’t possibly cure everything wrong with a man whose spent his life in an asylum.” He could practically hear her chew over her phrasing. “I need to know… If John goes too far – if he shows signs of regressing…or just becoming more volatile – I need to know you’re going to put your foot down.”

“I’m more than capable of handling him, Iman.”

“Please, Bruce, I’d rather not have to pull you off another broken pipe lodged in your kidney.” She paused, and Bruce let her continue, feeling the scar in his side twinge at the painful memory. “I know you care a lot about him,” she resumed in a softer tone, “and I know you trust him. But if you doubt him at any time, you need you to step back and re-evaluate your choices. I don’t want him to regress back into the Joker.”

That was a different Joker, Bruce wanted to say. He knew that wouldn’t sound the way it should. “I promise I won’t let that happen.”

“Good to know,” Iman replied, sounding somewhat relieved. “This doctor you’re hunting – is there anything we can do to help?”

Bruce shot a look at the clock in the corner of his monitor. He didn’t have as much time left as he would’ve liked before his virtual meeting started. “Tiffany can fill you in a bit, I had her help searching Arkham’s records before. Can you run a plate for me? I think Dr. Crane is running with a stolen car; I’ll send you the details in a bit.”

“Sure. We can check traffic cams for it, too, if you’d like.”

“If you would. And the second I have anything concrete on Dr. Crane, I’m sending Tiffany the details – I need her pull as Oracle to get the word out to the GCPD before anything happens. They’ll listen to their number-one informant more than a vigilante coming out of retirement.”

“…you’re…?”

He could almost see the shock in her face. They’d had a short discussion about his alter-ego when he decided to quit the first time; she’d been incredibly understanding about the whole thing. It was almost as if she’d seen it coming.

“Are you sure?”

He was as sure. She didn’t know about the instincts broiling underneath his surface every day. She didn’t know he never really stopped being half of himself. She wouldn’t know or really understand that he just shoved it all down and aside like he did so much else just to get through things. “I don’t have any other options at this point.”

“…you know you can count on us if you need the help.”

“Of course I do.”

“Right. Well, in the meantime we’ll keep the fort over here running as smoothly as possible.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Good luck.”

The line went silent, and Bruce pulled his phone away, catching a glimpse of three unread messages.

Sorry, buddy, I was just kidding around, you know? Ha ha

Bruce???

Hello???????

Sorry, had a phone call and couldn’t reply. It’s fine.

Seconds ticked by, and Bruce began changing out of his black t-shirt and into his button-down. It wouldn’t do to appear as a CEO in anything less than a proper suit. He could leave the jeans on, at least.

“Oh! Uh…sorry, Bruce…”

He felt his heart stop for a second. That was definitely John’s voice, even though it crackled slightly from the speakers. The monitor didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. John must have been using the spy-camera feature on the Batcomputer; it was linked to most the devices in the house, and Bruce’s webcam was no exception. He’d almost forgotten it had a loudspeaker function, too.

“I didn’t realize you were…um, changing.”

Bruce glared at the webcam’s lens. “John, what did I tell you about fiddling with the Batcomputer?”

“…sorry. I was worried when you didn’t answer me.”

He sounded genuine, at least. Bruce could easily picture him running upstairs to find him, if there wasn’t a chance he would’ve been seen. “I answered you a minute ago. I was on a call with Iman,” he stated plainly, fixing the buttons on his sleeves.

“…oh, ha ha, there it is! Uh, I guess I’ll just…go, then…”

Bruce almost questioned why John was sounding nervous and distracted, but it wasn’t until he saw the webcam light wink off again that he realized his shirt was wide open, the scars littering his torso half on display from the waist up.

Thankfully, no one was around to see Bruce bury his face in the palm of his hand for a moment, feeling like his face was on fire from first and second-hand embarrassment.

It didn’t last long. Bruce took a few deep breaths as he fixed himself up, and dialed into the meeting with a fixed expression of calm, firmly ignoring the heat that had settled in his stomach that threatened to go lower at the thought that John was bound not to forget any of that.

Driving the Batmobile in full gear again was certainly something else. Bruce felt the weight of the Kevlar body armor press against his limbs as he sped down Gotham’s twisting alley streets, no one any the wiser that the Wayne’s red sports car was hiding Batman behind it. The city’s CCTV signal was scrambled with the flick of a switch as he came into driving distance of the alley’s camera, making him almost untraceable.

He’d given the Honda Accord a head-start; it couldn’t go nearly as fast as the Batmobile, and Bruce had to find a spot to safely change before going to go pick John up from his drop-off point, and the post-working-hours traffic had already gotten its usual early start. It was a slower drive than he’d like it to be, even with Bruce’s shortcuts.

The setting sun was completely obscured by a dark overcast. It made the orange streetlamps glowing over the decorations sitting here and there in windows and doors even more energetic, like every corner of Gotham was slowly growing with the energy of Halloween.

Bruce clicked the communicator in his cowl. “John, are you there yet?”

Silence for a few seconds, and then a rustling noise. “Sorry, I had to take this off for a bit. What?”

“Are you there yet?”

John giggled slightly. “Oh, yeah, I’m here. Just waiting on you, pal.”

He was already at the meeting point? How did he get there so fast? “You put everything back where it was supposed to be?”

“No, I stripped the seats and threw everything into the garbage,” John grumbled with dripping sarcasm. “Of course I did, it’d be rude not to put Jerry’s stuff back. What do you take me for?”

“…I’m just making sure you didn’t forget anything.”

“I didn’t.” There was a loud slurping noise, like the last of a liquid being sucked from a straw.

“John, where are you right now?”

“In the alley, waiting for you.”

“Did you make a stop?”

John giggled, a little louder, but not at all nervous. He was enjoying himself. “What can I say? Going out on the town with you like this makes me thirsty,” he said with a strange purr. “Besides, no one bats an eye at me when I look like this anyway.” He paused. “Well, no, I’ve gotten some eyes on me, but, uh, I think they’re more the appreciative type. I guess ZZ Top was kinda right about the sharp-dresser thing.”

Bruce felt his brows knit together. “You’ve always looked sharp,” he said truthfully, turning down a narrow alley.

“Yeah, but not thousand-dollar-suit sharp. There’s a difference! Plus I think this bullet-proof vest makes me look a little bulkier than I actually am.”

Bruce spotted him leaning against the graffiti-covered wall, a Burger Lord cup in one hand and a plastic orange bag in another. Just how much time did Bruce lose while he was changing?

John tossed the drink in the dumpster and practically jumped into the car, shoving the orange bag behind the driver seat and slamming the door shut as Bruce switched off the communicator. He took one look at Bruce’s questioning glower and gave a nervous sort of grin. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, there’s something in there for you, too.”

Bruce almost asked what, but decided that a lecture on keeping a low profile and not taking money from his house’s various hiding spots would have to wait. (Though he supposed whatever John got wasn’t expensive. He was quite frugal, and it wasn’t as if Bruce couldn’t afford to buy John whatever he wanted anyway.) He concentrated instead on heading down the twisting path towards Toxic Acres. At least the traffic over there was a hell of a lot lighter.

“Hey, when you drove me to the Batcave, did you go in fourth gear, or third?”

He wasn’t sure why he asked, but he honestly couldn’t remember. He just recalled putting his foot to the floor and keeping his eyes on the road, occasionally reaching over to check John’s pulse. “I wasn’t really paying attention to that; I concentrating more on driving as fast as possible.”

“Oh – so you didn’t know you could punch the shift down into third whenever you wanted? It was so fun! I can say I literally punched it out of the Batcave!” He laughed. “I’m guessing you can’t do that in this car?”

“…I’ve got paddle shifters.” They were starting to travel into the more deserted road leading into Toxic Acres. Bruce took a sharp turn onto the hill with the broken Do Not Enter sign, and checking that no one was behind him, flipped the switch to shift the car into armored plates and pressed the wheel-paddle for a lower gear.

They flew down the road with a whirring whine of the engine, John’s notorious excited laugh mixing with it, and Bruce allowed himself to smile a little at it, knowing his own little joyful thrill wouldn’t last very long.

John was soon tapping his fingers together in some kind of rhythm as they passed by more empty houses, Bruce moving a little slower to keep his eyes out for trouble. Sitting close to the river on the outskirts of the city, they were originally meant to be a long neighborhood for the middle and upper class to build their lives, but as the unemployment and crime rates rose, the place became abandoned. It didn’t help that the piping structure to carry water there had been faulty, making either lead poisoning or unfiltered dirty water a prominent problem and giving the section of Gotham its nickname.

“How do we know which place is the botanist’s?” John asked, his green eyes scouring the houses in front of them.

“I sent out another drone earlier for some aerial shots. There’s a place with camouflaged green-houses in the back on Aster Place.”

“Wow, you did that before I left? That was fast…”

“It was a quick job. I’m not picking up the other drone until later.”

They turned the corner onto Aster Place; the road would dead-end in a while, but Bruce knew the house wouldn’t be situated at the end.

“Oh, there’s the spot Jackie got shot at!” John pointed ahead. “I wonder if there’s a bloodstain left…!”

Bruce tightened his grip on the wheel. “We’re close.”

It was oddly quiet out there. There was no other sign of life in what was a hot-spot of criminal hide-outs. Bruce turned on the thermal vision in his cowl; a lot of the houses were actually empty for once.

Except for one. 1801 Aster Place. There were a group of people scattered around on the bottom floor and what appeared to be a lot of heat-lamps running on the top floor. If one of the people in the group wasn’t Pamela Isley, then she might have been holding up in the basement…

They left the Batmobile out of sight down the road, and Bruce and John moved swiftly behind the backs of the houses in the chilly night air, the taser bomb safely in John’s coat pocket; John was surprisingly quiet, only humming a familiar tune here and there. (Wasn’t it the theme from that old spy-thriller…?) Bruce managed to quiet him with a look, and John mimed locking his mouth shut and throwing the key away.

Two unknown people were standing in what used to be a kitchen; three more people were up in the front room of the house. There were no security cameras to be seen.

“Stick close to me,” Bruce whispered, the modifier in his cowl deepening his voice. “We go in through the back window, take out the two in the kitchen quietly and throw the bomb up front so we can cuff the lot. If none of them are Ms. Isley, we find the basement.”

John gave him a thumbs up, pulling out the riot baton he had hidden away. (Bruce had still not remembered when he or Alfred bought that, but vaguely remembered stashing it in the towel cupboard with some other emergency gear. He wasn’t surprised John found it.)

The bathroom window’s locks weren’t difficult to break. They looked like they had been broken several times already. Bruce slid the insect screen up and slipped in through the thin opening feet-first, twisting his limbs just right to softly land on the floor. He had to help pull John through the rest of the way after he smacked his head on the bottom of the window; thankfully he hadn’t made any noise, but he did give Bruce a strange look as brushed himself off where Bruce had gripped his sides.

Bruce didn’t have time to think about it.

The two people in the kitchen stood in semi-darkness, watching through the patio windows with rifles leaning against the wall. There wasn’t so much a bare bulb to give off light. Bruce figured their eyes might have adjusted to the dark, and signaled John to follow as he crept up behind the two goons.

“I dunno, with all the hype surrounding episode four, you just know those guys are going to mess up somewhere. Remember when they decided to let Celestyne drop to his death back in season one?” The one with dreadlocks asked.

“Oh, come on, that was just to test the game’s limits. Besides, Celestyne couldn’t die; I don’t think Jane can, either,” the second person responded in a higher voice with a casual shrug.

“Dude, you know the game’s gonna make her a villain in the end, though, right? She might die…”

Bruce was ready. John was gripping the baton with a widening grin…

“Are you kidding me? They have her affection meter up so high I’m surprised the game doesn’t have a dating opt-”

Bruce slammed dreadlocked goon’s head into the wall just as the baton crashed down on the other goon’s skull, little smears of blood marking the plaster and paint with a satisfying crack.

John clutched the collar of the goon he’d struck, gripping the slightly bloody baton a little harder in his other hand. He seemed to be thinking.

Bruce took a zip-tie out and cuffed the goon’s hands behind their back, and wondered just what John was staring at until he’d turned the person around and caught a glimpse of them in the light of the window.

They were both women with little tattoos of vines creeping along the back of their necks.

If Bruce guessed right, those were ivy leaves on the vine. Poison Ivy had a loyal gang.

John zip-tied the wrists of the woman he’d struck and patted the part of her head that wasn’t wounded. “Sorry,” he whispered as if she would hear it. “Lauren’s ex,” John mumbled, gesturing to the woman on the floor as if he knew Bruce had raised his eyebrow at him.

Bruce simply swept onward, spying the door for the basement. There was a light on in the front room, and three women who looked like they could be professional boxers of different weight categories were sitting in different areas. One was sharpening a knife at the table, and another was cleaning a semi-automatic rifle as the third kept watch over a monitor showing security camera footage; three looked to be by the greenhouses (Bruce recognized the Foxglove variety growing in one under an opening in the glass, sitting next to something that looked primeval), and two were watching over the plants upstairs (marijuana, by the looks of it) and in the basement.

There was a figure in the last screen, working over a row of potted plants with low lamps. A zoom-in with Bruce’s lenses showed long red hair.

Bruce felt a hand on his shoulder, and John crept ahead him, the taser-bomb in hand: it looked like a mass of the sticky-bombs grouped together, colorful wiring connecting them all like some kind of net, and before Bruce could do or say anything, John threw it into the living room, where it tumbled into the middle of the floor.

The group began to shoot out of their seats in a second, and in the next the ball seemed to expand like a geometric toy, the wired tasers being thrown in the air with a flash before smacking people and surfaces alike as they discharged. All three people fell to the floor in trembling heaps, and John dashed out and started to cuff them, Bruce close behind.

The electric bombs were safe to touch now that they had fully discharged, so Bruce had no qualm about stomping on the lightly-burning sections of carpet underneath some of them to prevent any spread of fire as he pushed them aside. The bulkiest goon wasn’t quite down for the count; she was still conscious.

She yanked John off her fallen comrade by his shoulder and threw him into the table’s edge. Bruce threw a Batarang at her arm just as she was about to punch, and John gave a swift knee to her stomach as she flinched.

She fell to the floor with a louder crash and a grunt, pulling the Batarang out from her arm and letting it drop to the floor. “You fucker…” She said, glaring up at John before looking over at Bruce, her eyes widening as he approached with more Batarangs at the ready. “B-Batman…?”

“Yup! He’s real,” John said playfully before smacking the side of her head with the baton. “And so am I,” he added with a growl. He decided to tie her wrists behind the nearest table leg. “I hate not being able to call myself Joker like this… Really sells it better.”

Bruce felt his heart twitch at the name. “You can call yourself that, if it helps,” Bruce said gently, tying the monitoring-station woman’s wrists together, “Just not to people’s faces.”

“Kinda defeats the point,” John grumbled.

Bruce shot a look at the security monitor – Pamela Isley didn’t seem to have heard anything. Still, precaution should be used. “Let’s go,” he said plainly, sweeping out of the room with a swish of his cape.

John tucked a hand into his pocket and followed.

The basement stairs were carpeted and quiet, but Bruce was careful to walk on the outsides rather than the middle. Spiders had clearly made themselves right at home in the damp corners of the walls, and he had to duck to avoid getting the tips of his cowl’s ears stuck in one of their webs. A soft sort of click was heard behind his back, and Bruce figured John had gotten out his grappling gun.

Pamela Isley was bent over a row of exotic-looking orchids posed under heat lamps, dabbing something into the center of a blue orchid’s petals. Bruce saw several troughs full of hallucinogenic mushrooms sitting on the other side of the wall.

“There you go, my darling,” she cooed in a honeyed voice, acting like she was carefully painting the center of the flower, “You’ll soon be the belle of the ball…”

Bruce eyed the electrical box on the other side of the room. It wouldn’t do to drown the place in darkness; he’d be able to see, but John wouldn’t. The best bet was to tackle and restrain her.

Or…

Bruce took out his own grappling gun, and aimed it at Isley’s collar. One click, and it snagged her shirt with practiced ease.

“What the-?!”

Pamela Isley was suddenly dragged yelping through the air at an angle, smacking hard into one of the tables and spilling several unusual potted flowers to the floor.

Bruce grabbed her and threw her to the concrete floor, standing over her with several Batarangs in his hand as John cackled beside him.

“Jonathan Crane,” Bruce growled out, “Where is he?”

Pamela Isley sat up, shock written all over her face as she processed exactly what happened – it quickly morphed to a steely stare. “Batman,” she said slowly in a sweet voice, “I thought you were an urban legend,” she continued, wiping the corner of her mouth where a dribble of blood leaked out. “Do you always treat a lady this way?”

Bruce dragged her up by her collar and threw her against the wall, keeping her at arm’s length. “I know he bought plants from you today. Tell me where he is.”

“Or what?” She taunted, smirking widely at him. “You think I haven’t been knocked around by men before? I’ve been in whole worlds of hurt, honey.”

There was the distinct sound of the grappling wire rushing through the air, and then an enormous crash – John had taken out one of the mushroom tables, the fungi now breaking and bouncing against the floor it the scattered in the dirt.

“Whoopsie,” John hummed, a wide unnerving grin on his face, “butter-fingers.”

Isley looked rather taken aback, but the expression quickly warped into a mocking glare. “You think destroying my inventory is going to intimidate me?”

John shrugged, leaning back against a table and knocking over a several small tropical plants with a slide of his hand, shattering the clay pots and sending the plants scattering to the hard floor.

That definitely got her attention; her face paled slightly and there was tremble in her. “Stop that!”

Bruce glared at her, mentally thanking John for his quick thinking. “Tell me where Crane is and I’ll consider stopping him from tearing this place apart.”

Her dark green eyes glared at him with a slow-boiling dislike. “Let me go first.”

Bruce did a very quick once-over; she didn’t seem to have a gun holster on her, and she was definitely a lighter build than the rest of her gang. Knives were still a possibility. He decided to let go, keeping a Batarang between his fingers just in case as he stepped just out of her reach.

Pamela dusted off her green turtleneck. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care. He bought a few of my flowers and left,” she said, crossing her arms.

John laughed, fingering the leaves of the blue orchid she’d been attending. “With a hole in his shoulder? You didn’t even offer a band-aid for that?”

Pamela was closely eyeing the plant in John’s hand. “What if I did?”

“I know he’s a friend of yours, Isley,” Bruce growled. “You’re the only one who could know what he’s planning.”

“I told you, I don’t know,” she stated, “and I don’t care. I’m not his mother.”

“I can see why you were paying such close attention to this one,” John hummed, fingering the petals with a gloved hand. “It’s so pretty. You put a lot of effort into keeping all these, huh?” He grinned at her, almost looking like his usual self. “It’s not just some financial scheme for you, is it?”

“Of course it is,” Pamela stared at him, trying to keep her voice level; Bruce noticed her eyes kept flicking slightly downward, like she was watching the plant. “I breed and sell rare plants to collectors on the side.”

“Oh good! So this won’t bother you!”

In a swift move, John cut the blossom off the stem with the bowie knife one of the group upstairs had been sharpening.

The blossom fell to the table, and Pamela Isley looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

John picked up the blossom. “Let’s see – she’s honest,” he said playfully, plucking a petal from the stem, “she’s not!” He pulled another.

“STOP IT!” Pamela shrieked, making to rush at him – Bruce pulled her back and pointed the tip of the Batarang at her face. She glanced at it fearfully, but then looked back at the flower being torn apart in John’s hand, and it looked like she was watching a child die before her eyes.

“Stop that,” Bruce instructed; John hummed and held it still. “Talk, or my partner and I crush every plant in this place.”

Isley stared at the flower in John’s hand. “I… I don’t know what he’s planning,” she said quietly, her voice cracking slightly. John only touched the tip of a petal before she spoke again – “But-! But I know… He’s building something. He didn’t say what, but he asked for some muscle - I hooked him up with some of Maroni’s old boys.” She shut her eyes and took a breath before glaring at John like he was a complete monster. “I hope the lot of them tears you limb from limb.”

Bruce forced Isley’s hands behind her back and zip-tied them. “Down on the ground,” he growled, pushing down on the top of her head. John pointed the grappling gun in her face with a smirk; a good insurance if she decided to try and elbow Bruce in the face.

Pamela shot them both a hateful glare as she knelt down, and it didn’t waver as her ankles were tied, too. “I won’t forget this,” she spat.

Bruce sent off a message to Tiffany regarding the coordinates of “Poison Ivy”’s headquarters from his gauntlet. He knew she’d get the word out before he could even get back in the car. “Tell it to the judge,” he taunted, leading the way out of the basement, not missing the sparkle in John’s eyes as he followed, the severed, torn orchid blossom having been carelessly thrown at Pamela Isley’s feet.

John gathered up the sticky bomb device before they hustled back to the Batmobile, and it wasn’t until the doors closed that he spoke, and when he did it was in a tone Bruce would almost call revered.

“So, what do we do now, partner?” He asked, a definite glow on his face.

“We go look at some of the Maroni gang’s old haunts and see if we can find anyone recently hired,” Bruce said, the voice modifier in his cowl now disabled. He glanced at his recent text messages: one from Tiffany giving the ok on Poison Ivy, and another from Iman with the last known location of the stolen Ryde car. “After we look into the motels in the red-light district. Crane might’ve stayed there.”

John laughed to himself, but for once he didn’t share the joke; instead, he pulled out a packet of jerky from the plastic bag he’d brought along. “I knew this would be a long night,” he said cheerfully, as if he was really looking forward to the whole thing.

It was well past one in the morning when Bruce arrived back home through the front gate, the Batsuit stowed away and the plates flipped back to red. The two patrol officers were only somewhat surprised to see him arrive back. Naturally, they reported nothing new, since John had been dropped off in the Batcave first.

Sore muscles were nothing new to Bruce. The old strained climb back up to his bed was just as annoying as ever. He honestly didn’t feel like he wanted to sleep, but after following several empty leads over the city and bruising a few heads alongside John, he did admit that he was physically exhausted. He knew lying down was better than nothing, and he still had to go to work in several hours like he didn’t have a double life. At least he wasn't starving, thanks to John thinking ahead and buying him protein-and-carb-filled snacks.

He forced himself to go through his usual nightly routine, despite the temptation to just flop into bed and lay there. He looked at the bruises on his back and ribs from where John had struggled against him under the influence of Crane’s drug, and decided not to bother putting the bruise-away cream on them, nor on the new ones forming on his shoulder from where one of the former mobsters had hit him.

When he did finally collapse onto the master bed in nothing but his boxer-briefs, his brain still decided to chat away at him.

There were no leads as to who exactly Isley had hired for Crane. Bruce cursed himself for not trying to work the specifics out of her. At least he knew she was arrested for drug possession and manufacturing, as well as smuggling illegal fauna.

There was no word on the whereabouts of Jackie Lant. Her car was missing, and she’d called into work sick. Her apartment hadn’t been visited in the entire time Bruce had his drone’s eye on it, and neither Tiffany nor Iman had seen anything when they looked into Jackie’s friends’ places, either. All Bruce knew was that she hadn’t called an ambulance to fetch her from Toxic Acres, that she hadn’t been admitted to a hospital, and that there was no sign of her body either in the Acres or in the Gotham River.

She was alive, somewhere, and Bruce didn’t know what she was going to do next. He hoped she was just going to lie low until he caught Crane.

Jonathan Crane was nowhere to be found. His house was still empty. He didn’t seem to be staying at any of the motels – or hotels – around the red-light district or its surrounding streets, and nothing had come of a quick credit-card check. The Ryde driver the GCPD fished out of the River that morning had been shot in the head, and his car was so common that if Crane could’ve switched the license plate with anything and been completely invisible. They’d done a quick search of the warehouse district and found no sign of him there, either.

Bruce had the nagging feeling that he wasn’t going to find Crane until the doctor reared his head.

The billionaire rolled onto his stomach, shoving the anxious thought away as he pressed his cheek further into the plush black jersey pillowcase. There were a couple more places he could check tomorrow…

The bedroom door creaked, and Bruce’s eyes shot open, a second away from grabbing the billy-club under his pillow – he could see John’s messy hair in his dark silhouette.

“Bruce? You awake?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“…can I come in?”

“Sure.”

Bruce noticed he closed the door behind him. Like he was planning to stay there.

That definitely put a new light onto the situation. A tense thrill was building in his shoulders as John deigned to sit on the edge of the mattress, his back to Bruce.

John was only wearing his Arkham-regulated pants, and the pale white of his bare skin almost shone in the light streaming in from the window. Bruce saw several bruises forming, one of which was from where he’d gotten grabbed by the shoulder by a Poison Ivy goon, and several more where he’d gotten knocked into.

“…I don’t think I can sleep in that guest room,” John sighed. “I mean, I tried my usual methods of sleep induction, but… It’s too big…and empty. I’m really not used to that.” His voice came out quieter and more contemplative. “I know it’s weird, but do you mind if I sleep in here?” He asked, turning halfway to look right at Bruce.

He felt trapped. If he said no, at the worst John would sulk, and at the best John wouldn’t get any sleep, and that was definitely worse for his mental health. John had mentioned before about how regular sleep cycles were supposed to help with that.

If he said yes, though, he’d know he was sleeping next to John, and there was the tiny worry in the back of his head that John might…try something. Or at least roll over too much.

“I promise I’ll stay over on my side,” John muttered, not tearing his eyes away.

“Alright.”

A sweet smile stretched on his face. “Thanks, Bruce. You won’t regret this.”

“If you keep talking, I might.”

John giggled as he slid beneath the covers on the far side of the bed, flopping one of the extra pillows down between them. “There – a no-roll barrier,” he said as if he had to explain the concept to Bruce.

It did not escape Bruce’s attention that John had decided to lie facing him and rest his arm on top of the pillow. John had pulled the covers up to just underneath his armpits; Bruce could see John's sharp collarbone and the lean wiry muscle of his chest. (Bruce made sure not to look for more than a moment's curiosity would allow.)

God, John’s face was actually his for the first time that whole night. Bruce had gotten used to seeing it in the natural makeup, but it was almost a relief to see it in its normal borderline-luminescent white. He looked like the man Bruce knew.

Acid-green eyes stared at him, flicking slightly and growing soft. “I…did want to talk to you about something, though. If it’s okay.”

“I suppose I’m still awake,” Bruce said in an attempt to lighten the tension in his arms. “Sure.”

“Do you ever…look back on something, and think about the worst thing that could’ve happened in that situation?”

He didn’t like to admit it, but he had. Usually in his worst moods, he’d think about how everything could’ve gone wrong. He’d usually think about everything he could’ve done better, too. “I try not to, but…sometimes, yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about our fight a lot, lately,” John confessed, “At Ace. I used to think about it a lot when I got recommitted, but… You started visiting me,” he said softly, a light smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You remember when I told you I thought I’d messed things up for us?”

“Yeah.” It was Bruce’s first visit to John. He never forgot the sheer hopeful joy on John’s face upon seeing him. It was practically engraved in his memory.

“Ever since I started sessions with Crane, I kept going back to that night. He always tried to weasel my worst secrets out of me,” he said with a low scowl, “but when he started using that…toxin on me… I kept…thinking about what could have happened back there. I… I know I almost killed you.”

The sheer pain reading in John’s eyes was enough to make Bruce want to wrap his arms around him. It was beautiful and raw and honest, and Bruce found himself holding stock still, almost captivated by the expression.

“I kept seeing it. Over and over – it was like I could see myself throwing you over the railing or-or stabbing you, or...” Bruce saw tears welling up as John clenched the pillow between them. “I don’t want to come close to that again, Bruce,” he managed to say, his voice starting to hitch. “I don’t… I don’t want to kill you.”

Bruce threw his pride away and grabbed John’s hand in his. “You won’t.”

“You…you don’t know that,” John said with a light sob. “If…if I…go back to how I was… If I mess up...”

Bruce squeezed his hand, feeling the soft skin twitch under his fingertips. “I won’t pretend you’re perfect,” he said, honesty seeping through every word, “but I know you, John. I know you’re not going after Crane out of revenge, like you did with Waller. You reached out to me for help – but you were already trying to find a way to stop him without resorting to just stabbing him with the nearest shiv.”

John sniffed, a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth like he was almost smiling. “Yeah…”

“So you’re not the same person you were then, are you?” He soothed with a supportive smile. “Even if you feel you are going backward, I know it won’t be to that same point.”

“Maybe…” he said with another sniff, looking more serious. “But Bruce, you know there are things I can’t ever really stop, right? The auditory psychosis is pretty much going to stay with me the rest of my life,” he started, clutching Bruce’s hand back, “and I’m not going to lie here and pretend my pulse wasn’t pounding a mile a minute when we were fighting those mobsters out there.” He sported a small knowing grin at him. “You know what that’s like, though, don’t you…”

(Yes, he did.)

“…you know what’s funny? I used to think one bad day could turn a person completely upside down.” John managed to stroke his thumb against Bruce’s knuckle, sending a little shiver over the skin, and Bruce wondered if John knew how incredibly intimate that gesture felt as he stared softly at him from the pillow. “Especially after Waller came to town… But…I never really thought things could go back up after it. I guess it just…takes a while.”

Bruce knew there was something right in John’s line of thinking. It only took one day to turn his life on its head, and he felt he knew, despite John having no memory of his life before Arkham, that something similar had happened to him. “Well…they say time heals all wounds.”

“How much passed before yours started to heal?”

He almost didn’t want to answer. The truth was that he wasn’t sure at all if he was ever going to fully heal, despite knowing what his parent’s really were. Maybe it was because he knew the terrible truth about them that they wouldn’t ever heal right. Maybe he’d always have that miserable note in the background of his life.

“…I’m still healing.”

“I didn’t say you stopped, buddy,” John chuckled with a knowing look. “Still…got good days and bad days, huh?”

“Feels like it, yeah.” Today…was definitely more of a mixed day. Looking at John across from him, though, all honest and open, and thinking back to how it felt to fight alongside him again, and investigate with him, with that warmth and instant familiar comfort between that never faded away, he almost felt like he wanted to call it a good day. “Today might have tilted things right-side up.”

John laughed, a genuine, humored one that was almost infectious. “Now I know I’m rubbing off on you; that sounds like something I’d say!”

John slipped his hand away and turned to lie on his back, still chuckling to himself. The warmth still burned in Bruce’s palm, and he found himself reluctant to pull his hand away at all.

John turned to him once more, an all-too-familiar affection shimmering brightly in the green depths. It pulled Bruce in and made him feel like he should inch close enough to feel the warmth and security it promised. “’Night, Bruce.”

“Goodnight, John.”

John turned over, leaving Bruce to stare at the bruises forming on his shoulders. There was the terrible temptation in his hands to shove the pillow between them aside and wrap his arm around the man’s middle so he could lean into that pale, battered back and bury his face in a head of soft, green hair.

There was a worse urge, one so vivid it almost made Bruce’s head spin – he could just reach out and touch the bruises, feather-light, and trail his fingertips down the curve of spine until it arched with a pleased shudder, and Bruce could follow that trail with his mouth as far as John would let him.

Bruce turned his head away, the memory of John’s lips on his coming to the front of his mind, and he shut out the mental image of repeating that kiss right then and there, telling himself that he really shouldn’t feel that way towards someone who desperately needed support, nor to his best friend who he’d left scarred in more ways than one, and certainly not someone who was both.

It had been a long time since Bruce shared a bed with someone, and far, far longer when he shared one with someone he didn’t have sex with.

He hoped that was all it was. Just the bed’s memory getting to him, and nothing else…

Notes: Super-sexy-plant-person-in-her-late-twenties Ivy is OUT. Cougar-aged-mobster-botanist Ivy is IN! >:)

I really wanted a different Ivy. I’m tired of the young, uber-sexy walking plant-human-hybrid that’s immune to all toxins and diseases; plants get diseases, too, and she’s so plant-like she should have some kind of physical humanizing weakness! It’s much more interesting to have a human who’s just built up an immunity and uses her babies for weapons and business; I kept her serious environmentalist trait, though, because while I dislike the anti-hero thing she’s got going on lately and would love to see her as a straight-up villain again, we do have to relate to her somehow, and her love of nature is always going to be a good part of her. Since Harley’s older, too, I figured it would be alright if they had a ten-year gap between them, so when Pam eventually goes to Black Gate one day, they’ll be pals. ;)

And Bruce you complete fool!!!! You should’ve kissed him!!! Why do you do this to yourseellllfff? D:

I'm sorry it took so long, but as you can tell, I had a lot to work on, and I’m doing my best to write the next chapter as quickly as I can while this nutty energy in my brain is still fresh. I’m trying to keep with my weekly schedule, but I hope you guys are okay with having a gap day, as appears to be the habit now. ( ._. ) I mean, no one yells at me or anything for being late, but I aim to please with my work, and part of that is being consistent.

I shall continue to try my hardest! (*｀へ´*) 彡3 See you next weekend!!!

#batjokes #telltale batjokes #juce #atbom #at the brink of midnight #fordarkisthesuede writes #I had a lot of fun coming up with a different ivy!#i like the idea that she heads her own gang despite being rather anti-people #like she doesn't even consider them when the JUCE force shows up #then again goons are rather expendable in the batman universes aren't they?#i can't believe i worked in a nod to TFS's playthroughs of TT bats #i still laugh when i rewatch the first season and they just let Selina drop #all because they were curious to see what would happen #so will ivy's info have an impact on future events?#only time will tell.........#also i'm serious about those writer vibes #i'm sending 'em all out #you'll all do great this week i can feel it #p.s. the ao3 chapters are already edited properly so i'll fix the tumblr ones asap

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