it's the disease of the age
The lonely hill in the Palisades, with no neighbors - or even bordering property - for acres and acres, is a place Bruce doesn't visit very often. Brick by brick, he'd told Alfred, and that's just what he'd done. Wayne Manor, fully rebuilt, stands there now in the gloom of the New Jersey fall, still looking to Bruce like a phantasm. Something ( Read more... )
Enfys is out when she gets the text - she's got errands to run, flat listings to check out and there's a new second hand bookstore opening that she wants to swing by and have a look at - so she figures it's not too much out of her way and it's only about ten or maybe fifteen minutes later that she follows the breadcrumbs back to those coordinates he gave her. Her hair is half shoved up under her hat and she's wearing her glasses instead of the contact lenses for once, picking her way towards him with her bag bumping against her hip until she drops it down by his feet.
"What can I do you for?" she inquires.
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The notion of 'What do you have in there, bricks?' is plainly telegraphed on his face and Bruce pries at the edge of her bag, not actually intending to pick through it but just doing something with his hands instead of sitting there. (He's a professional at sitting there - meditating through his impatience, in plenty of circumstances, but he's genuinely a little anxious - and annoyed at that anxiousness - about the looming move.)
"Furniture shopping."
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The bag is unzipped and her Jack Skellington wallet is the most visible thing among its contents, but Enfys is sort of sidetracked by connecting 'furniture shopping' to the mansion behind them that it belatedly occurs to her wouldn't have been there not too long ago. She blinks, turns to stare for a moment, and then sits down by Bruce, plucking the lace of her slip away from the stone. "So, does that mean I get to furnish my room?"
...Enfys.
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Enfys' room, surreal as the thought might be, is actually why he summoned her here. Bruce has no context for living as an adult in this house aside from a few haphazard weeks cobbled together in between being a dead man and transforming into (a monster) a vigilante - because his life is just that insane, the most consistent experience he's had living in Wayne Manor had been in Taxon.
"Sure."
There are a hundred things they'll have to go over - if 'her room' means living here, there's a whole can of worms; but Bruce trusts Enfys to do what he tells her to do, because she's never given him reason to think she won't.
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"Might save me some pissing around with flat listings," she speculates idly, swinging her feet out and letting them drop against the denim tote. "Maybe." If he's all right with her living here, yes; she likes this place and she'd like that, but this also isn't Taxon and casually moving in entirely is not exactly the same, she already knows that.
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"There's things to talk about, in that respect," he says, but stands at the tail end of it - because he's not the sort to sit around talking, as she well knows. (Rare exceptions being when there are literally no other options, and even then, he's awkward.)
The walk to the manor shows just how much he wasn't kidding about at least one aspect of his declaration about the fate of his family home - the earth is still charred in places, and a ways away, there's a pile of decrepit and burnt demolished framing waiting to be hauled away. (The last of it.)
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Enfys whistles, low, at the sight of aspects of Wayne Manor that Taxon had left out; she'd believed him, because she makes a habit of believing what Bruce says, but it's different to see it with her own eyes. She tugs her hat off as they get nearer the manor itself, her hair askew underneath it, and says, "What things?" eventually.
It's not a challenge - of course there are things - she's just aware he's about as chatty as Silent Bob. (Enjoy that comparison.)
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Gotham proper is in the distance, though the closest things just starting to light up are other estates in the Palisades - though none of them are close enough you'd actually want to bother walking to. Wayne Manor seems to be the the farthest flung thing, on the largest plot of land; plenty of it has been left undeveloped, stubbornly, like he's refusing to make use of it just to annoy real estate agents everywhere ( ... )
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The point isn't that difficult to grasp - something easily grasped when so much of her own private research relates to balance, to how her world fits together. "You know, that's one of the quickest ways to fuck up I ever heard."
Slayers are in and of themselves an example of that, she thinks sometimes; it's not an opinion she's shared around a great deal, equal parts because she doesn't have a lot of people to say it to and because she doubts it'd be a popular opinion. She's already viewing what they are, what she is, from a vastly different position to many of the others.
As she mulls that over, her eyes travel over the familiar and unfamiliar, as if she's mentally overlaying what it looked like in Taxon, how it will look once it's furnished and properly lit and all.
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He makes some monosyllabic sound that's not really a response but seems to be an agreement anyway - Bruce realizes that he himself has been touched by otherworld forces and that he brings it with him and alters the course of reality every time he uses the Nexus to aid in his war. But he is different. He must be ruthless and cold and use every available means to stay afloat and stay just, and he is a part of Gotham.
Their footsteps echo through the mansion and it seems lonely and ghost-like, as if it could be a world unto itself, held apart from anything beyond its newly-minted doors. When he speaks, it's quiet - with the deliberate softness of someone who is trying to handle something with care, but isn't sure how. "It is imperative that I fight to this end alone. No matter what happens, and no matter what you see, you can't be involved in it."
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A few different things cross her mind - practicalities, first of all, like how there's a difference between looking for trouble and deliberately involving herself and being backed into a corner, and she can promise the first two but probably doesn't have a lot of control over the latter - but when Enfys finally, thoughtfully speaks up, it's none of those things. It's a little startling to actually think about how little she asks of him; she'd asked him not to lie to her and then never demanded anything more, she obeys when he gives her an instruction because she knows he knows what he's asking, she has so rarely felt the need for an explanation that something almost feels wrong about changing the script now.
"Like what kind of things are we talking about being irrelevant if I happen to see 'em, exactly?" she asks, picking at the pink crystals on her ring. "What, I guess, am I not getting myself into?"
The assumption of the tone of her questions is that she will agree, that she's already taken her own agreement as read - but like ( ... )
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It doesn't feel so heavy to tell her - Enfys, in a lot of ways, isn't really here. He could bar her from returning, he could scramble signals, he could never again set foot in the Nexus. She is a figment, but she is a figment that has watched him do things that she cannot explain because he hasn't. Other people know that there's something off about him but have never seen him in the midst of that offness, have never been able to attach actions to his strange behavior. In a way he is just putting a label on what she already knows.
There is a sick dark part of him that is viciously satisfied in doing it. (Remember, she's stronger than Rachel. She's not afraid of you. It won't kill her.Or maybe it's that because of what he's making forbidden that she'll survive ( ... )
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"Mr Dumbass," she says, folding her arms around herself and moving without really thinking about it in the direction of that kitchen, a familiar path. "Right. So that makes your Dr Jekyll...?"
...an incredibly inappropriate reference after something she wasn't around for?
That aside, there is a distinct patience about her pursuit of this explanation that wouldn't be there if she didn't trust him; she's content to let it come out in his own time because she's comfortable assuming that he will get to the point sooner or later, that this is all part of that point, that it will make sense. She's always known that there's more going on with Bruce than she knows about, and the shape of it feels like something she can accept.
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A beat. "...I'd keep that comparison between us." Not touchy, not even warning, just - there. It's something he's not going to elaborate on; hopefully she'll take the warning and that will be that, because he knows that Enfys is friends with Hasibe. Further clarification, unfortunately, would require more sharing of information than he feels is acceptable.
That out of the way, he stays in the doorway of the kitchen - it's empty - and watches her, thinking. (He's already informed Alfred of, well, everything. You'll have fingerprints on things besides peanut butter jars you try to hide is a sacrifice he's willing to make.)
"People have taken to calling it vigilantism."
Enfys is a smart girl. She can probably put Bruce's cold, perfectly trained efficiency and his limitless resources together and add up something that isn't somebody with a fake gun stalking the local cat burglar.
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As she does recognize it as a warning, even lacking the affect, Enfys pauses mid-step and then continues; she won't forget.
"You do not half fuck around, I tell you what," she says, boosting herself up onto the edge of the bare bench and swinging her feet sideways in the air, her shoes hanging down from her heels. Thinking out loud, she goes on, "So my work stays out of here - that's no skin off my nose, I can't study what doesn't exist - and I stay out of yours. I can promise not involving myself, I don't know if I can promise not getting backed to a wall. But you know."
Essentially, she has no objection as long as she understands, as long as everything is clear.
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"That's different," he says, ever-soft. "Just don't go looking."
He knows her tendencies, okay. But - he knows she's not going to do anything to get herself ejected or to violate the trust he has in her. He senses, inherently, that it's important on her end.
That'll be that, as far as he's concerned.
(She can find a newspaper with a Batman headline on her own.)
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