we hope your rules and wisdom choke you

[obscuronoctis]

For all the reflection and mental anguish, there is little thought to score his pace now. He's been in The Voltaic before, though just the lobby. It's massive, and deceptively winding like casino-resorts are wont to be - beautiful, but he only spent a handful of minutes seated in the lobby's upscale lounge. He should have stayed put

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[obscuronoctis]

There is nothing to do in this unearthly place besides stalk circles around each other, 'protected' by inexplicable whimsy. Whatever they'd call it - never a dance - it's boiled down to a game; the expanse before them is littered with traps and they have only chess pieces to navigate it. Ducard breaks formation first.

His voice kindles the emotion (brittle, blood under a burn) his face didn't, and Bruce would have let out a breath if he was the sort to have stopped breathing in anticipation. The expression he wears is faint and short-lived, just a fraction of a second, a splinter of I don't know what I'm doing here and it's gone, leaving him as ever (--now), as if carved from living stone.

He assumes, because he is not a fool, that Ducard reads every glimpse of it with precision.

"It's a little weird to hail a cab in."

There is a hush to his voice that is only tinted by the weight that is still just retreating from them - something has ground him down, water over rocks, smooth and beautiful but still raw from an eternity of freight-train pressure.

[alwaysturning]

Ducard is reading, of course-always reading-and that glimmer of something is interesting, too. For now, probably only for now, he sets it aside.

"I trust you're aware of the anti-violence field," he says, and through the smooth knife-edge of his voice it becomes a warning-or, perhaps, a test. He's been told that the field will hold up under any circumstance, but that doesn't mean he'll trust it to do so.

(He might have cracked a smile at the mental image of that, by the way, had it actually occurred to his imagination. Under wildly different circumstances, perhaps.)

[obscuronoctis]

"It's on the brochure." His voice is even softer in contrast, a murmur. His passive remark suggests he hasn't seen it in action, but to think Bruce Wayne wouldn't experiment out of thoroughness, even curiosity, would be ignorant. Ducard is no such thing.

Then again, maybe it isn't passive. Maybe it's dismissive. Maybe he doesn't think he has a damned thing to be afraid of - or maybe he just doesn't care.

[alwaysturning]

Passive or dismissive, it doesn't matter; at the moment, he finds both unpalatable. For him it's been just two weeks since the last time they encountered each other, after all, and we all know how that ended. That sort of thing tends to leave a sour taste in one's mouth.
On the other hand, Ducard doesn't look any worse for wear-he's been rejuvenated since, actually, but the signs of that are not at all apparent. Not while he's just standing here, anyway.

"You didn't infiltrate this hotel room to sit on my bed and make small talk." A question that isn't a question, or a statement of mild incredulity? Maybe both! Maybe he's calling Bruce an idiot in the most roundabout way possible, who knows for sure.

[obscuronoctis]

He experiences a sudden, uncomfortable-awkward urge to grouchily object to the word infiltrate; it's not his fault Ducard is hanging out in a room any idiot (he caught that, shut up) could get into in a moment. Hotels are death traps dressed up like a vacation, a security and privacy nightmare-

And just like that, with a sentence, he's got this thread of childish petulance creeping through him. Ducard makes it so easy. Even now.

"How long has it been?"

Aha.

[alwaysturning]

"Weeks." He turns his head slightly just as he says this, already moving forward in his thoughts before the word has even formed on his lips. "But not for you."

Years, he thinks, but does not say it. It's not that he's not confident in his assumptions, the gears are just rolling along without pause. (Plus, he enjoys it when people draw their own implications from his brevity.)

[obscuronoctis]

"No," he says, and it's an agreement, not a denial. "Not for me."

Years is right. Not many, not in the way (men like him) most people would qualify time - but every day is a lifetime for the Batman, and he's nearing the four year mark since the flames on Wayne Manor died down.

It is, as ever, the mileage.

Bruce watches him in a way that's both hyper-aware and remotely skeptical, like he's still not sure that this isn't some elaborate trick. Ducard has always managed to surprise him by degrees, but he's not sure what to expect, here - so he expects nothing, and just watches.

[alwaysturning]

That's very helpful of Bruce, breaking into his room-basically his house, at this point-apparently just to observe him like he's on the world's worst-camouflaged safari. Completely helpful and not weird at all. But oh well, turnabout is fair play, and it doesn't shake the foundations of Ducard's world, or anything. He has been through far more disturbing events within the past couple of weeks. The first day alone was a ridiculous horror, never mind the rest of it...
But let's not get into that.

Abruptly, Ducard ceases staring at Bruce, dropping instead into more or less casual body language, and leaves the entranceway of the suite. He's not doing anything thrilling, just moving to the minibar to acquire a glass of water, although never quite turning his back on the man on the bed. Oh, and continuing to nettle him.

"Well, you aren't looking for a fight, or we wouldn't have had the opportunity to exchange so many words. And I doubt you've come prepared with an apology... so, what, then." His eyebrows lift in a particular (purposefully annoying) way as he raises the glass to his mouth.

[obscuronoctis]

Unlike the moment just before, he doesn't react, even inside. That almost-eerie calm has shaken off the layover nerves of being intimidated like the student he once was and left him as this strange being, this grown man who looks out at his former teacher with something that's not quite expectation.

And then - something familiar, a slight tilt of his head, his gaze flickers away. Not shying away, not faltering as such, but a maskless tell of honesty. "I wanted to see if it was really you."

[alwaysturning]

He's poured little more than a mouthful into the glass, just enough to quench, and the way he consumes it-one fluid, unhurried motion, one clean swallow-suggests that he wishes it were something else. He sets it down carefully, watching it until it touches the low counter with a quiet bump.

"Word travels quickly here, doesn't it." One long hand curls around the counter's edge, and he turns. "How long have you been watching?"

[obscuronoctis]

For half a heartbeat he feels guilty for putting this austere man off-balance, but it comes up bitter. Whatever debt he owed Ducard - even if it was only lingering respect - has crumbled away with the rest of his ash-stained lies. And yet there is no true escape: the remnants, soot hiding stubbornly in the corners of his insides, haunt him still.

He seems to find something curious for a glimmer of a moment and moves his posture again, minuscule. "Not long."

[alwaysturning]

All these brief answers might frustrate someone else; Ducard is well used to them.

He may not be entirely sure of his footing here and now, but if anything, he is good at regaining it. He's collecting all these little signs and signals as they appear, forming conclusions with them-assumptions, mostly, but rarely does he fail to find purchase in his leaps of reasoning. Don't think he's forgotten the first one, either. That one was the most telling.

"And yet you learned enough to find me here, out of every conceivable location in this vast realm of infinite possibilities." There it is-that glint. Like he knows something. "I'm impressed. It would seem you've become quite the detective."

[obscuronoctis]

Oh, irony. Something flickers on his face like it might be a wry smile - but it's brief and mostly in the way his eyes catch the light, and it's hard to tell. Some detective; Ducard gave Tom his name and told him he'd be at this hotel. But maybe Ducard already knows that. Bruce isn't quite egotistical enough to think that he's patting himself on the back over his student's progress.

"Some talk more than others," he says instead, and what once would have been barely-controlled embarrassment and defensiveness is now a sort of indescribably mild tone that might be wryly self-depreciating if you quint. "People-watching here could be an Olympic sport." Bruce doesn't seem to appear to expect Ducard to buy any kind of Well I just saw you walking around one day excuse. He's just pushing pawns around. Probably.

[alwaysturning]

Bruce could have been poking fun at the both of them just then, really, and it's this sort of line that Ducard truly appreciates. Layers. He loves them. (And he loves irony, too.)

"Indeed, it could be." ...And now he doesn't feel like standing over there anymore. So he abandons the minibar in favour of the closet, where he slips out of his suit jacket, then racks that up alongside the others, taking care that it hangs correctly. He's not going to be denied comfort in his own room just because mister so-and-so decided to show up suddenly. Kid's just sitting there, anyway.

"I have to wonder why, though, you felt it necessary to surprise me in my room like this. Would a public encounter not have sufficed?" He is pretty much just saying things because he can, yes.

[obscuronoctis]

His eyes track the older man, watching how he moves, like he can read between the pages and draw out answers to the questions that he hasn't even yet formed. People these days accuse him of having an unsettling weight to the way he looks at people even incidentally, but Ducard is the last person he'd think would notice, if he was even aware of it.

It occurs to him that he should really - leave.

"I might have walked away."

Blunt, and still-soft in that strange (new) way he has, stitched together inch by inch under his skin. The honestly should sound uncomfortable, but it doesn't.

[alwaysturning]

If that awareness required being unsettled himself, then perhaps he wouldn't notice, at that. He is conscious of the scrutiny, though, the same way he always was-and whatever he thinks of it, he's keeping it to himself (the same way he always did).

With a few quick turns of the wrists, Ducard's sleeves are rolled only halfway up his forearms, and the first two buttons of his shirt are loosened on his way back to the minibar. "You might have walked away at any point. Removed your hand from the latch, turned away without crossing the threshold. Slipped out like a ghost when you heard the card slide into the lock." This time he does turn his back to Bruce, and once again pauses to fill the same glass with water. He turns... oh, two glasses. That's interesting, isn't it?
His long strides are by no means urgent, but they slow all the more as he approaches bedside space, as though the density of the air itself is altered by their proximity to one another.

"You knew it was me," he says, in that quiet, knowing way of his, the one that courts both fondness and admonishment without committing to one or the other. Hospitably, he offers the fresh glass. "So why didn't you?"